Berliner Tageblatt - 'Sahil Omar': A forever criminal falsely linked to US shooting

Two juveniles were among the suspects detained after a mass shooting on Wednesday at the Kansas City Chiefs' Super Bowl victory rally, which left one person dead and 22 wounded, police said.

But self-styled sleuths on social media sites, including Elon Musk's X (formerly Twitter), falsely identified one of the shooters as "Omar."

"At least one of the Kansas City Chiefs parade shooters identified as Sahil Omar, a 44 year old illegal immigrant," said one post on X, without offering any evidence.

President Joe Biden has "failed to protect America from invasion and terrorism," the post added.

The rumor started hours after the shots rang out. Within a day of the shooting, which officials said was the result of a personal altercation rather than terrorism, "Sahil Omar" was trending on X.

This was not the first time this character's name was dragged through the mud.

Last month, social media users blamed "44 year-old migrant Sahil Omar" for an explosion at a hotel in the southern state of Texas.

But AFP fact-checkers found no reference to this name in official records. Local authorities identified no suspects, suspecting that the explosion was caused by a gas leak.

That's not all.

This name has been falsely linked to a host of other high-profile incidents -– from an explosion at the US-Canada border crossing at Niagara Falls in November to a deadly shooting the following month at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

It was unclear whether a real "Sahil Omar" exists.

The disinformation appears to be aimed at linking immigrants to mass-shootings and crime.

A torrent of online posts blaming "Omar" for tragedies often reference criticism of the Biden administration's handling of a record wave of illegal migrant crossings from Mexico -- a hot-button issue ahead of the US presidential election in November.

"I knew it was gonna be an illegal!!!" said a post on TikTok that wrongly linked "Omar" to the Kansas shooting.

"They are all about violence. Ship them back to where they came from!!"

Disinformation often follows US mass shootings and other high-profile events.

Before "Omar," false claims blaming American comedian Sam Hyde followed a series of tragedies, smearing his name in a long-running hoax popular on 4chan.

M.Furrer--BTB