The Facebook page “On aime la France sans islam” (We like France without Islam) frequently shares racist and Islamophobic content. On March 1^st, it posted a report from the French news channel BFMTV which had been edited in several places. The report details the policies of Franck Briffaut, the far right National Front (FN) mayor of Villers-Cotterêts, in northern France, who was elected in 2014. It shows the town’s residents to be generally satisfied with their mayor, but two interviews criticizing the mayor were removed from the original report.

The first deleted passage is an interview with Mohamed, 19, a preparatory class student. He says that he plans to vote for the centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron in next month’s presidential election. The second passage is an interview with Adil, another student who “leans towards voting for [far-left candidate] Jean-Luc Mélenchon and doesn’t want the Front National to govern”.

The French blog Fdesouche published an article on February 26th claiming that Théo and his brother Mickaël Luhaka were the sons of Thomas Luhaka – the current minister for infrastructure of the Democratic Republic of Congo. According to the article, this relationship explains the visit the French President, François Hollande, made to Théo Luhaka after his assault by four French police officers.

Théo, a 22-year-old youth worker, was the victim of a violent arrest on February 2nd in northern Paris.  One officer has been charged with raping Theo, and the three others with assault.

According to Fdesouche, the story of Théo’s alleged family ties originated from the website sangoyacongo.com. Fdesouche also cites the websites Africawave, and Mediapart, where the claim appeared on February 9th 2017.

The news agency AFP contacted minister Thomas Luhaka in Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC. Luhaka assured AFP reporters that Théo and Mickaël are not his sons, but are his nephews. “They are my nephews, my big brother’s sons, Prosper Luhaka who lives there [in France]”.

On the website of the radio station Africa n°1, the journalist Fatou Biramah also refers, in an article of February 27th, to Thomas Luhaka as the “uncle” of Théo and Mickaël.