Faked video targeting France and UAE likely Russian despite Moscow's links to Gulf Arab states

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Faked video targeting France and UAE likely Russian despite Moscow's links to Gulf Arab states

2024-09-13 15:15 Last Updated At：15:20

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A fake video that ricocheted across the internet claiming tensions between France and the United Arab Emirates after Telegram CEO Pavel Durov's detention in Paris likely came from Russia, an analysis by The Associated Press shows, despite Moscow's efforts to maintain crucial ties to the UAE.

It remains unclear why Russian operatives would choose to publish such a video falsely claiming the Emirates halted a French arms sale, which appears to be the first noticeable effort by Moscow to target the UAE with a disinformation campaign. The Emirates remains one of the few locations to still have direct flights to Moscow, while Russian money has flooded into Dubai's booming real estate market since President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

France, however, remains one of the key backers of Ukraine and its President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as the war grinds on. Meanwhile, Russia likely remains highly interested in what happens to Telegram, an app believed to be used widely by its military in the war and one that's also been used by activists in the past. And the move comes amid concerns in the United States over Russia, Iran and China interfering in the upcoming U.S. presidential election.

Russia's Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

The fake video began circulating online Aug. 27, bearing the logos of the Qatar-based satellite news network Al Jazeera and attempting to copy the channel's style. It falsely claimed the Emirati government had halted a previously announced purchase of 80 Rafale fighter jets from France worth 16 billion euros ($18 billion) at the time, the largest-ever French weapons contract for export. It also sought to link Dubai's ruler and his crown prince son to the decision, as Durov holds an Emirati passport and has lived in Dubai.

Such a decision, however, was never made. The UAE and France maintain close relations, with the French military operating a naval base in the country. French warplanes and personnel also are stationed in a major facility outside the Emirati capital, Abu Dhabi.

Reached for comment, Al Jazeera told the AP that the footage was “fake and we refute this attribution to the media network.” The network never aired any such claim when reporting on Durov’s detention as well, according to an AP check. On the social platform X, a note later appended by the company to some posts with the video identified it as “manipulated media.”

The video also appeared to seek to exploit the low-level suspicion still gripping the Gulf Arab states following the yearslong Qatar diplomatic crisis by falsely attributing it to the news network. State-funded Al Jazeera has drawn criticism in the past from Gulf nations over its coverage of the 2011 Arab Spring, from the United States for airing videos from al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and most recently in Israel, where authorities closed its operation over its coverage of the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The social media account that first spread the video did not respond to questions from the AP and later deleted its post. That account linked to another on the Telegram message app that repeatedly shared graphic images of dead Ukrainian soldiers and pro-Russian messages.

Such accounts have proliferated since the war began and bear the hallmark of past Russian disinformation campaigns.

In Ukraine, the Center for Countering Disinformation in Kyiv, a government project there focused on countering such Russian campaigns, told the AP that the account engaged in “systematic cross-quoting and reposting of content” associated with Russian state media and its government.

That indicates the account “is aimed at an international audience for the purpose of informational influence,” the center said. It “probably belongs to the Russian network of subversive information activities abroad.”

Other experts assessed the video to be likely Russian disinformation.

The Emirati government declined to comment. The French Embassy in Abu Dhabi did not respond to AP's request to comment.

Durov is now free on 5 million euros bail after being questioned by French authorities and preliminarily charged for allegedly allowing Telegram to be used for criminal activity. He has disputed the charges and promised to step up efforts to fight criminality on the messaging app.

Despite the video being flagged as fake online, captions and versions of the video continue to circulate, showing the challenge of trying to refute such messages. Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov just attended a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council in Saudi Arabia attended by the UAE. Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE have mediated prisoner exchanges amid the war.

Given those close ties, the UAE likely will or has reached out quietly to Moscow over the video, said Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a research fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute who has long studied the region.

“It may be that this is a part of the Russian playbook which is to seek to create wedges between political and security partners, in a bid to create divisions and sow uncertainty," Ulrichsen said.

“The importance of the UAE to Russia post-2022 does make it unusual, but it may be that the campaign is aimed primarily at France and that any impact on the UAE’s image and reputation is a secondary issue as far as those behind the video are concerned.”

Associated Press writer Volodymr Yurchuk in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed to this report.

Death toll in attack on Christmas market in Germany rises to 5, with more than 200 injured

2024-12-21 19:29 Last Updated At：19:30

MAGDEBURG, Germany (AP) — Germans on Saturday mourned both the victims and their shaken sense of security after a Saudi doctor intentionally drove into a Christmas market teeming with holiday shoppers, killing at least five people, including a small child, and injuring at least 200 others.

Authorities arrested a 50-year-old man at the site of the attack in Magdeburg on Friday evening and took him into custody for questioning. He has lived in Germany for nearly two decades, practicing medicine in Bernburg, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Magdeburg. officials said.

The governor of the surrounding state of Saxony-Anhalt, Reiner Haseloff, told reporters that the death toll rose from two to five and that more than 200 people in total were injured.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that nearly 40 of them "are so seriously injured that we must be very worried about them.”

Several German media outlets identified the suspect as Taleb A., withholding his last name in line with privacy laws, and reported that he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.

Mourners lit candles and placed flowers outside a church near the market on the cold and gloomy day. Several people stopped and cried. A Berlin church choir whose members witnessed a previous Christmas market attack in 2016 sang Amazing Grace, a hymn about God's mercy, offering their prayers and solidarity with the victims.

There were still no answers Saturday as to what caused him to drive into a crowd in the eastern German city of Magdeburg.

Describing himself as a former Muslim, the suspect shared dozens of tweets and retweets daily focusing on anti-Islam themes, criticizing the religion and congratulating Muslims who left the faith.

He also accused German authorities of failing to do enough to combat what he said was the “Islamism of Europe.” Some described him as an activist who helped Saudi women flee their homeland. He has also voiced support for the far-right and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

Recently, he seemed focused on his theory that German authorities have been targeting Saudi asylum seekers.

Prominent German terrorism expert Peter Neumann said he had yet to come across a suspect in an act of mass violence with that profile.

“After 25 years in this ‘business’ you think nothing could surprise you anymore. But a 50-year-old Saudi ex-Muslim who lives in East Germany, loves the AfD and wants to punish Germany for its tolerance towards Islamists — that really wasn’t on my radar, " Neumann, the director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence at King’s College London, wrote on X.

“As things stand, he is a lone perpetrator, so that as far as we know there is no further danger to the city,” Saxony-Anhalt’s governor, Reiner Haseloff, told reporters. “Every human life that has fallen victim to this attack is a terrible tragedy and one human life too many.”

The violence shocked Germany and the city, bringing its mayor to the verge of tears and marring a festive event that’s part of a centuries-old German tradition. It prompted several other German towns to cancel their weekend Christmas markets as a precaution and out of solidarity with Magdeburg’s loss. Berlin kept its markets open but has increased its police presence at them.

Germany has suffered a string of extremist attacks in recent years, including a knife attack that killed three people and wounded eight at a festival in the western city of Solingen in August.

Magdeburg is a city of about 240,000 people, west of Berlin, that serves as Saxony-Anhalt’s capital. Friday’s attack came eight years after an Islamic extremist drove a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 people and injuring many others. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.

Chancellor Scholz and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser traveled to Magdeburg on Saturday, and a memorial service is to take place in the city cathedral in the evening. Faeser ordered flags lowered to half-staff at federal buildings across the country.

Verified bystander footage distributed by the German news agency dpa showed the suspect’s arrest at a tram stop in the middle of the road. A nearby police officer pointing a handgun at the man shouted at him as he lay prone, his head arched up slightly. Other officers swarmed around the suspect and took him into custody.

Thi Linh Chi Nguyen, a 34-year-old manicurist from Vietnam whose salon is located in a mall across from the Christmas market, was on the phone during a break when she heard loud bangs and thought at first they were fireworks. She then saw a car drive through the market at high speed. People screamed and a child was thrown into the air by the car.

Shaking as she described the horror of what she witnessed, she recalled seeing the car bursting out of the market and turning right onto Ernst-Reuter-Allee street and then coming to a standstill at the tram stop where the suspect was arrested.

The number of injured people was overwhelming.

“My husband and I helped them for two hours. He ran back home and grabbed as many blankets as he could find because they didn’t have enough to cover the injured people. And it was so cold," she said.

The market itself was still cordoned off Saturday with red-and-white tape and police vans every 50 meters (about 54 yards). Police with machine pistols guarded every entry to the market.

Some thermal security blankets still lay on the street.

Christmas markets are a German holiday tradition cherished since the Middle Ages, now successfully exported to much of the Western world.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry condemned the attack on X.

Aboubakr reported from Cairo and Gera from Warsaw, Poland.