A FAR-RIGHT French politician falsely claimed that a video of Irish youths knocking a woman on to a train tracks in Dublin showed migrants attacking women in France.
Thierry Tsagalos, a member of the far-right political party The National Rally, shared a video to his Facebook page which he claimed showed migrants attacking women at a train station in France.
The clip showed a group of youths harassing women at a station, lunging at them and pretending to push them, before one woman is knocked by the wheel of a bike being cycled by one of the youths, causing her to fall on to the tracks.
Tsagolos wrote in his Facebook post-- translated from French-- that "scum spits in the face of young girls and punches them, randomly. One falls on the tracks."
He called for the 'migrants' to face life imprisonment and to be deported from France.
However, the video Tsagolos shared was actually taken in Ireland, where a group of Irish youths were harassing people at a station in Howth, Dublin in April of this year-- which The Irish Post had reported on at the time.
Same scumbags that were in Malahide jumping around the car made a women trip under a fucking train at howth junction. Poor woman, must have scared the fuck out of her and the people who pulled her off the tracks. @loreillysf @DMitchellTD @GardaTraffic @AodhanORiordain pic.twitter.com/JQuuNwWsDD
— Wayne (@LifeandtimesM) May 3, 2021
The misinformation was investigated by The France 24 Observers, who contacted multiple Irish outlets who had reported on the incident at the time and whose journalists confirmed the youths were in fact Irish, and not migrants.
Tsagolos-- who is supporting far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in the upcoming presidential elections-- edited the caption on his Facebook video where he acknowledged that the clip was shot in Ireland, but still blamed "multiculturalism" despite the fact the youths were Irish.
Four teenagers, aged between 13 and 16 years, were arrested as part of the investigation into the scenes at the train station, but all were released without charge as Gardaí prepared a file to be sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Investigations are ongoing, both into the incident and how the CCTV footage was made public
