German Court Favored Facebook in Case Brought by Syrian Refugee

A Syrian refugee who posted his selfie with Angela Merkel has finally given up his attempts to sue the social media site over multiple posts falsely linking him to terrorist attacks.

The matter is that the photo which Anas Modamani took of himself and Angela Merkel at a Berlin refugee shelter 18 months ago has since been repeatedly shared on doctored photomontages, which supposedly identified Modamani as a terrorist. As a result, he filed a preliminary injunction against Facebook Europe, seeking to prevent the image from the continued dissemination.

However, the German court rejected the refugee’s injunction, saying that Facebook was not obliged to proactively seek out and delete defamatory posts, because it was neither a perpetrator nor participant in the smears. Anas Modamani hoped the case would force Facebook to actively seek out and stop the proliferation of illegal content. In response, Facebook’s legal team said it was not aware of “miracle software” that would allow the deleted content to be uploaded again. Facebook acknowledged that it was a very difficult situation for the refugee and assured that it was quick to disable access to reported content, though some examples of postings flagged up to Facebook remained online even after the court ruling – for example, a post linking Modamani to an arson attack on a homeless person in Berlin.

Modamani’s lawyer received death threats over the course of the trial and announced that he would not personally take the case further. Instead he revealed that the pressure was now on lawmakers to penalize social media sites with financial fines for breaking the law.