Refugee took selfie with Merkel, so social media falsely branded him a terrorist. Now he’s suing Facebook

A Syrian refugee famous for taking a selfie with Angela Merkel in autumn 2015 is taking Facebook to court for allegedly taking insufficient action against what the man says are defamatory “fake news” posts using his picture.

Facebook has been summoned to a district court in the southern German city of Würzburg in what could prove to be a landmark case as the government looks for ways to make internet companies more accountable for the content published on their platforms.

Anas Modamani, 19, from Darayya, a suburb of Damascus, took a photograph of himself with Merkel during the chancellor’s visit to a refugee shelter in Berlin’s Spandau district on 10 September 2015.

In the days that followed, the picture he had taken on his mobile phone, as well as a press agency photographer’s shot of him taking the selfie, became defining images of the German response to the refugee crisis.

Since then, however, the photographs have frequently appeared in social media posts alleging that Modamani has subsequently been engaged in criminal or terrorist activity.

In March last year, numerous posts and articles falsely identified Modamani as Najim Laachraoui, one of the terrorists behind the Brussels bombings. Similar postings proliferated after an attempted suicide bombing in Ansbach, Germany, in July.