German court rejects Syrian refugee’s case against Facebook

A Syrian refugee who took a selfie with German Chancellor Angela Merkel has failed in his attempt to sue Facebook over a series of posts that made him the target of racist trolls.

The image of Anas Modamani, 19 year-old from Darayya near Damascus, has been repeatedly manipulated to link him to attacks or violent crimes, including a case in which juvenile delinquents set fire to a homeless man in Berlin last Christmas.

Modamani wanted an injunction forcing Facebook to actively identify and remove such posts, rather than wait for users to flag them, AP reported.

Modamani’s lawyer, Chan-jo Jun, had hoped the case would result in social media platforms being forced to delete slanderous posts not just after they had been flagged up by users, but to actively seek out and stop the proliferation of illegal content.

After Tuesday’s ruling, a spokesperson for Facebook told The Guardian: “We appreciate that this is a very difficult situation for Mr Modamani. That is why we quickly disabled access to content that has been accurately reported to us by Mr Modamani’s legal representatives, and will continue to respond quickly to valid reports of the content at issue from Mr Modamani’s legal representatives.”

However, The Guardian has seen examples of postings which Modamani’s lawyer claims to have flagged up to Facebook but which remain online even after the ruling. One such post, which links Modamani to an arson attack on a homeless person in Berlin, was posted on 27 December 2016 with the comment “Look: there’s Merkel’s golden boy” and has been shared over 900 times.

Jun said he was disappointed with the court’s reasoning. “The judge rejected an injunction partially on the basis that the content had already been distributed worldwide by the time of the hearing. This is a cynical argument: it means that the only way an individual could stop a slanderous story from going viral is by calling a court within two or three hours of the content being uploaded.”

Jun, who received death threats over the course of the trial, said he would not personally take the case further and the pressure was now on lawmakers to penalize social networks with financial fines when they broke the law.

"I cried when I saw it," Modamani told Al Jazeera, referring to the selfie after it went viral spreading defamatory allegations, "I want to live in peace in Germany. I fled from the war and bloodshed in Syria to live in safety ... I was too afraid to leave my house after I saw what people wrote about me. This is not just my problem. It’s a problem of our time."