Caution

Misleading

Does a French police logo call for the murder of anarchists?

Posted on

“Does this logo found on a police badge support a far-right group amongst the French police force and prison guards?”, asked the French news website Taranis on Monday 6th March. According to Taranis, the literal translation of the badge calls for “the death of anarchists, covered up as accidents on public roads”.  This is backed up by explanations of the meaning of the black cat symbol through pages from the website Wikipedia.

The badge shows a black cat and the acronyms “DCD – AVP – RABIO”.   “Is this logo, worn fearlessly by police officers instead of the official logo of the national police force, a call to murder anarchists?”, the website Taranis went on to ask.  When spoken in French, the letters DCD are spoken as Dé Cé Dé – pronouncing the word décédé – which translates into English as deceased.

Screenshot from the website Taranis

Interviewed by CrossCheck, a police source denied this claim. “The ‘black cat’ in any team [in reference to the black cat on the badge] is the unlucky one, the one who has to do the jobs no one wants.”  The source also explained the acronyms. “DCD stands for Delta-Charlie-Delta, AVP stands for an accident on public roads, and RABIO for overtime work”.  This badge is not related either to an extreme right group of the prison administration according to the police source. “It is preposterous: I have worked for 28 years, and I never heard of such a thing”, affirmed a union official.

The Gendarmerie National also refutes the claim. “Saying ‘I am the black cat of the unit” shows that we are the one most likely to be subject to Murphy’s Law”, noted an officer of the Gendarmerie contacted by CrossCheck. “To say that the black cat has anything to do with anarchy, or politics in general, is far-fetched”. This has also been asserted by many comments on Facebook pages that support the police force.

Facebook comments in support of the French police force.

Crosschecked by

BuzzFeed News
La Provence
AFP

Insufficient Evidence

Did Front National supporters in the south of France receive anonymous threats?

Posted on

No conclusion on the veracity of a threat allegedly received by Front National supporters in the south of France.

On the 1st of March, Antoine Baudino shared a photograph of an anonymous threat he claimed to have received on his Twitter account.

In his Tweet, Baudino claims that Front National (FN) supporters from the Gard region (south-west France)  received this threat. The language in the threat is aggressive, stating (in error-strewn French) : “Long live the Algerians. Get out of here. This district belongs to us. We will slit your throats. Dirty white race. Long live all Arabs. You’ll all get out of here”.

Baudino presents himself as a collaborator of the Front National parliamentarian Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, who is also the niece of the French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen.

 

Antoine Baudino tweeted with the photo:  “Message received by FN militants in the Gard. Hatred. The real sort” – insinuating that this was a proof of ‘anti-white racism’ often denounced by the Front National.

There is nothing in the image itself that allows us to authenticate the threat or when or where it was received.  When contacted, the Front National in the Gard declared they had no knowledge of this threat. This was also the reply of Yoann Gillet, the party secretary of the Front National’s regional branch in the Gard. He added: “If people say they received such as threat, I don’t see any reason not to believe them”.

Baudino’s tweet was deleted 48 hours after having been posted. He has not responded for requests for comment through Twitter.

Crosschecked by

LCI
BuzzFeed News

False

Manufactured

Was Macron’s campaign for the French presidency financed by Saudi Arabia?

Posted on

“Emmanuel Macron, Saudi Arabia’s preferred candidate in the French presidential election”, exclaimed an article [link in French] that was shared on Twitter on Wednesday March 2 by Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, a French parliamentarian and niece of far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen. The site on which the story appears, however, is a perfect copy of that of the Belgian newspaper Le Soir — with a different URL.

As the image above shows, the official website of Le Soir [link in French] quickly denied that the story had come from its newsroom.

The news article does not come from Agence France-Presse — as the byline claims — and lesoir.info is not Le Soir’s official website – it is lesoir.be.  The clone site uses exactly the same font, design, and page layout as the newspaper’s site. Clicking on any links on lesoir.info redirects the visitor to the pages of lesoir.be.

The domain for the clone site lesoir.info is registered to a Donald Thomas in Delaware in the United States.

Marion Maréchal-Le Pen tweeted: “30% of Macron’s campaign funded by Saudi Arabia? We demand transparency!”

 

Marion Maréchal-Le Pen deleted her tweet half an hour after it was published. Website Fdesouche also took their article down soon after.

 

Crosschecked by

LCI
AFP
Ouest-France
Libération
Les Observateurs de France 24

False

Manipulated

Has this BFMTV report from Villers-Cotterêts been altered?

Posted on

The Facebook page “On aime la France sans islam” (We like France without Islam) frequently shares racist and Islamophobic content. On March 1st, 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”.

Mohamed, 19: “I think I will vote for Emmanuel Macron. I believe he embodies new politics. We have a new and modern image of politics.” (0:14” – 0:35”)
When BFMTV asks Adil if he plans on blocking the Front National, he answers “Of course. Like in 2002, it is a united France against the Front National that I want.” (2:05′ – 2:38′)

Crosschecked by

La Provence
LCI
le journal du dimanche
AFP