Old and unrelated video is going viral as violence broke out in Paris after PSG’s Champions League victory.

Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) retained the Champions League title on 30th May, beating Arsenal 4-3 on penalties in Budapest, but the joy of victory gave way to destruction. Following the victory, the unrest broke out across Paris and several French cities. In this context, a video is circulating widely on social media, depicting several vehicles overturned on a street, with some ablaze. The footage also captures a crowd that seems to be vandalising a bus or tram station. The users who share the video claim that it shows the recent violence in Paris following the victory of PSG.

Let’s check the truth.

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Fact check:

We started our investigation with a reverse image search on Google, and the results led us to a similar video uploaded on the Facebook page of  Brut on 25 December, 2022. The caption states, “Violent clashes in the heart of Paris following the attack in front of a Kurdish cultural centre”.

This indicates that the viral video is old and not related to the recent events.

The viral footage shows a crowd appearing to vandalise a bus or tram station. A reverse image search revealed that this video was uploaded to a Facebook account on 25 December 2022. The caption accompanying the video states it was from Paris. 

The December 2022 riots in Paris were sparked by a racially motivated mass shooting on December 23, 2022, which killed three people and wounded three others at a Kurdish cultural center. The violence that followed escalated rapidly into widespread unrest.

As per reports, “A 69-year-old French man opened fire at three Kurdish locations, including the Ahmet Kaya Kurdish Cultural Center. The gunman was arrested at the scene. He confessed to having a “pathological hatred of foreigners” and admitted the attack was a racially motivated hate crime.

Based on the evidence, the scenes depicted in this video, which is being circulated with claims of recent violence in Paris, are not recent; they are approximately three years old.

Conclusion

Fact Crescendo found the claim made along with the video to be misleading. This video shows the riots that erupted after a fatal shooting involving the Kurdish community in Paris in December 2022.