Old photo of man vandalising statue in Algeria shared as immigrant in France

What is the claim?

Several social media users are posting a collage of photos of a man seemingly vandalising a statue with the claim that it shows a Muslim man in France destroying the face and the bare chest of a statue of a woman because “nudity is considered a sin."  

One X (formerly Twitter) user posted this collage with this claim, adding, “What do you think of the type of people we are importing into Europe, massively?” (Translated from Spanish) At the time of writing this story, this post had amassed over 340,000 views and more than 9,800 likes. Another X user shared the photos, and wrote a caption in Italian, claiming that it showed the effect of the “invasion of differently cultured people."

The archives of this and other such posts can be seen here, here, and here.

Screenshots of the viral posts sharing the photo with this claim. (Source: X/Modified by Logically Facts)

However, we found that the viral photo is actually from El Fouara fountain in Algeria and the incident occured in 2017.

What are the facts? 

On conducting a reverse image search, we found that several news outlets had published similar images from 2017. 

According to a news report from December 20, 2017, which carried an image of the man next to the statue, a naked female figure of the El Fouara fountain was vandalised with a chisel on December 18, resulting in damage to its upper half.

Another report by France 24’s The Observers detailed that a man attacked the statue on the Ain El Fouara fountain in Setif and chiselled off the face and breasts of the female figure before being arrested. According to the report, the work is by French sculptor Francis de Saint-Vidal and is a symbolic monument in the town.

Screenshot from a news report about the incident in Setif, Algeria on December 18, 2017 (Source: observers.france24/Modified by Logically Facts)

We were also able to find a report by English language e-newspaper Morocco World News. The report added that the perpetrator, who was arrested over the incident, was a 34-year-old man from Beni Hocine commune, and reportedly suffered from a mental health condition. The report also carried a video (archived here) of the incident, showing a bearded man damaging the statue before being arrested by the authorities. 

Getty Images also carried a photo of the incident, taken on December 18, 2017, and credited it to AFP. 

We were also able to geolocate the fountain in Setif using Google Images, and identified the same hollow tree beside the statue as well.

A comparison between the Google image and the viral photo. (Source: Google Maps/X/Modified by Logically Facts)

The statue has reportedly been damaged several times, once in 1997, in 2006, on this occasion in 2017, and once again in October 2018 but was repaired each time. 

The verdict

The viral photo does not show a recent vandalism incident in France and is not the effect of immigration or “invasion by people of different cultures." The incident took place in 2017 in Setif, Algeria, and reportedly was carried out by a man suffering from mental disabilities.