He experienced “an eventful night and morning”. It’s almost a euphemism that Benjamin C., an Australian student, used to describe the hours when he was wrongly named on social networks and in an Australian media outlet as being the author of the attack on Saturday in Sydney . This stabbing attack in the Westfield center, in Bondi Junction, left six people dead and twelve injured, mostly women.
On Sunday morning, Australian police confirmed the identity of the assailant: Joel Cauchi, a forty-year-old man who suffered from “mental health problems”. Since the evening before, Internet users on social networks had wrongly and without any proof designated Benjamin C. as guilty. The accusations have even spread among French Internet users.
“Everything came to a head,” said Benjamin C. Sunday at News.com.au. “People don’t really think about what they post and the effect it might have on someone. It’s very dangerous to see people inventing things and destroying people’s lives. »
The concern of loved ones
The accusations had an impact on the family of this computer science student. His father said he received calls from their loved ones: “Everyone is wondering what’s going on, people are asking if it’s true,” he told News.com.au. Of course that’s not true, it [Benjamin C.] is not even politically motivated. He’s just a normal kid who now has to deal with this situation. »
The accusations against the young Australian began to be published on X, the social network owned by Elon Musk, just 2.5 hours after the police were notified of the attack, according to an investigation by Australian media ABC News. A first account with only 37 subscribers published an anti-Semitic tweet naming the student as responsible for the attack. The author of the message, however, takes care to add that the information is not “confirmed”.
For Marc Owen Jones, a researcher interviewed by our colleagues, this account could be part of a propaganda operation.
Sunday morning, a media also calls him guilty
The accusation was then repeated four hours later against a pro-Putin Australian, who was living as a refugee in the Russian embassy – he finally apologized when the police gave the name of the attacker. The accusation gains visibility and influential accounts on X take it up overnight. In the early morning, an article from an Australian media outlet, 7 News, even named Benjamin C. as the attacker, while the police have still not confirmed the identity of the man visible in the images. The media then erased its error, but not quickly enough for a screenshot to circulate.
For Benjamin, who has a Jewish-sounding last name, it is no coincidence that he was targeted. “There are simply very clear intentions that have been shown,” he analyzed to ABC News.