DISINFO: Ukrainians extorting money from family of a murdered Hamas prisoner
SUMMARY
Ukrainian scammers tried to rob the relatives of deceased German-Israeli Shani Luk, who was captured by HAMAS units. After the death of the 22-year-old victim, they demanded a ransom of 500,000 euros, Westdeutscher Rundfunk reports.
Shani Luk was killed on October 7 during an attack at the Supernova Sukkot Gathering music festival in Israel. A video appeared on the Internet with a girl in the back of a HAMAS pickup truck, who was unconscious and lying in an unnatural position. Shani Luk's parents identified their daughter in the footage by tattoos on her legs. Even then it was obvious that the girl had died, but this did not stop the Ukrainians from enriching themselves from the grief of others.
“Her (editor’s note – Shani Luk) family began receiving calls on behalf of Hamas members and demanding a ransom of 500,000 euros. During the investigation, the German police found out that the calls were not related to the Palestinian movement, they came from the territory of Ukraine,” – the article says.
RESPONSE
This is a complete lie using highly emotional topics. The disinformation outlet refers to a non-existent article in a German media, Westdeutscher Rundfunk. Therefore, the basis for the claim does not exist.
Ukraina.Ru only quotes "Westdeutscher Rundfunk" (WDR) while two Telegram Channels published a snapshot of the same article attributed to WDR, entitled "500.000 Euro für die Tochter" ("500,000 euros for the daughter"). No such article exists on the website of WDR. The snapshot's text contains grammatical errors in German, as OstWest found out.
This technique of disinformation built on emotions is not new. It utilises the human sociological phenomenon called the "sleeper effect", when we initially discount the message given by an untrustworthy or nonexpert communicator but, over time, we remember the content of the message and forget its non-credible source. The result is an attitude change in the direction of the initially disinformation message. See our analytical review "Lighting fire to emotions with lies".
The government of France said in June 2023 that a Russia-linked misinformation campaign targeted government websites and usurped several French media as part of broader efforts to smear Ukraine.
On October 27, the Russian-language anonymous Facebook account "Oleg Dor" published a screenshot of one of the articles of the Russian-language service of the German international broadcaster, Deutsche Welle. A screenshot of the article is accompanied by a photograph of four newborn babies, and the headline reads: “In Germany, Ukrainian women began to give birth to children from Arabs and did not wait for their husbands to return from the front", as reported by Mythdetector.
Pro-Kremlin disinformation routinely claims Ukrainians are Nazis, arms and organs traffickers or child dealers in order to justify Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Among other false claims, the claim that Shani Louk's relatives were extorted money "not by HAMAS but by scammers with Ukrainian phone numbers" was repeated by Utro Daghestana (Morning of Daghestan) telegram channel, which called for an anti-Jewish pogrom in Makhachkala.
See other cases smearing Ukraine such as the Kyiv regime is desperately mobilising women into the army and the US gave ATACMS to Ukrainian Nazis to attack civilians.