Attack on US judge not in protest against anti-Muslim remark
A video has circulated on the social media platform Facebook claiming to show a Muslim person’s protest following the remark, “Muslims have no right to live.” However, Dismislab’s fact-check has found that no religious remark can be heard being made by the judge in the original video.
A 24-second video was posted on August 1 from a Facebook account named “Dbiner Dawat‘ (Call of the Faith), which shows a person suddenly leaping over the judge’s bench and physically attacking the judge. Following this, court security personnel and other people present attempt to restrain the attacker.
In the video, the United States national flag and the flag of the state of Nevada can be seen behind the judge. The official seal of the state of Nevada is visible on the wall behind, and the judge’s name, Mary Kay Holthus, is seen displayed in front of the bench. Additionally, the logo “RJ” of the news outlet “Las Vegas Review-Journal” can be seen in the bottom right corner of the screen.
The video’s caption read, “A hero rose up and avenged the injustice done to the Muslims because they did not have the right to live.” (verbatim). As of the publication of this report, the video had been viewed more than 16,000 times and shared 130 times. Additionally, the video has been posted with the same claim from several other Facebook accounts (1, 2, 3). These posts, too, have been viewed roughly a thousand times each.
Through a key-frame search, Dismislab found several news reports published about the original incident (1, 2). The video used in these reports matches exactly with the video that recently circulated. The reports reveal that, at a court in Las Vegas, defendant Deobra Redden attacked the judge after Judge Mary Kay Holthus denied his application for probation. He leapt over the judge’s bench, knocked her to the ground, and punched her.
From the report published by CNN and the video report of the incident published by CBS News, the conversation between the judge and the defendant can be heard. In it, Judge Mary Kay Holthus is not heard making any remarks about Muslims.
A relevant keyword search found a video published on the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s verified YouTube channel. One of their reports states that this incident occurred on January 3, 2024.
In other words, the claim that the judge was attacked in court as a protest against an anti-Muslim remark is not correct, rather the video is of an unrelated old incident.
All social media captions, quotations, and news excerpts in this article have been translated into English from the languages in which they were originally posted or published.
