Image copyright Anas Modamani Image caption Anas Modamani posing with German leader Angela Merkel for a selfie 
 
 A Syrian migrant who posed for a selfie with Angela Merkel is suing Facebook after being falsely linked to terrorism in posts shared on the social media network. 
 
 The legal action comes as Facebook has been facing significant pressure to combat the proliferation of fake news reports on its platform. 
 
 In Germany, there have been numerous instances of false allegations on social media made against migrants and refugees. 
 
 Anas Modamani is one of those who has been the target of such false reports. 
 
 He briefly sprung to prominence in September 2015, when Angela Merkel visited the Berlin migrant shelter where he was then living. 
 
 Mr Modamani took his chance to snap a picture with the German leader. 
 
 Now aged 19, he had then arrived in Germany just a month earlier, after fleeing Darayya in Syria and travelling to Berlin via Turkey, Greece and Serbia. 
 
 But that selfie was to make him a target. 
 
 Image copyright Facebook Image caption Mr Modamani has been falsely linked to terror attacks in posts on social media. 
 
 "I was first linked to attacks when my picture was circulated as being one of the Brussels attackers due to perceived resemblances between us," he told the BBC. 
 
 "When the claims started being circulated on social media, I was in Munich visiting friends. 
 
 "Some friends advised that I stay at home and avoid going out in public, which I did. 
 
 "Others encouraged me to go to the police and report what was being said about me. 
 
 "But I kind of just hoped it would go away on its own." 
 
 And for a while it did. 
 
 However, another attack, on a crowded Berlin Christmas market, and the attempted murder of a homeless man in the same city by seven young migrants, once again saw Mr Modamani falsely accused. 
 
 "At that time, I had disabled my Facebook account, but the lady who is hosting me in Germany brought them to my attention," Mr Modamani said. 
 
 Image copyright Facebook Image caption This Facebook post falsely links Mr Modamani to an attack on a Berlin homeless man. 
 
 "I was fed up with this happening again, so we discussed getting a lawyer involved." 
 
 Chan-jo Jun, a lawyer who in November 2016 prompted an investigation into Mark Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives following a complaint alleging that the company had failed to remove racist posts, in contravention of German laws against hate speech, has taken on the case. 
 
 "Facebook is doing a very poor job with fake news," he told the BBC. 
 
 "But it is especially doing a poor job with illegal fake news. 
 
 "Not all fake news is illegal, but where it amounts to slander, as I believe this does, then it should be taken down." 
 
 Mr Jun has filed an injunction "seeking to prevent Facebook from publishing the slanderous image of the Syrian refugee Anas Modamani in the context of terrorist attacks". 
 
 A Facebook representative said: "We received a takedown request from Mr Jun alleging that a specific item of content on our platform violates Mr Modamani's right of personality. 
 
 "Access to that reported content was quickly disabled, so we do not believe there is any basis for him to seek an injunction." 
 
 However, Mr Jun claims that not all of the offending content has been removed and several images falsely linking Mr Modamani to terrorist activity are still available on Facebook. 
 
 The case will be heard at a court in Wurzburg on 6 February. 
 
 Produced by Chris Bell and Sara Fayyad, UGC and Social News Team 
 
 A note on terminology: The BBC uses the term migrant to refer to all people on the move who have yet to complete the legal process of claiming asylum. This group includes people fleeing war-torn countries such as Syria, who are likely to be granted refugee status, as well as people who are seeking jobs and better lives, who governments are likely to rule are economic migrants. ||||| High-profile refugee accuses social network of failing to take action against posts falsely linking him to crimes 
 
 A Syrian refugee famous for taking a selfie with Angela Merkel in autumn 2015 is taking Facebook to court for allegedly taking insufficient action against what the man says are defamatory “fake news” posts using his picture. 
 
 
 
 Facebook has been summoned to a district court in the southern German city of Würzburg in what could prove to be a landmark case as the government looks for ways to make internet companies more accountable for the content published on their platforms. 
 
 Anas Modamani, 19, from Darayya, a suburb of Damascus, took a photograph of himself with Merkel during the chancellor’s visit to a refugee shelter in Berlin’s Spandau district on 10 September 2015. 
 
 In the days that followed, the picture he had taken on his mobile phone, as well as a press agency photographer’s shot of him taking the selfie, became defining images of the German response to the refugee crisis. 
 
 Since then, however, the photographs have frequently appeared in social media posts alleging that Modamani has subsequently been engaged in criminal or terrorist activity. 
 
 In March last year, numerous posts and articles falsely identified Modamani as Najim Laachraoui, one of the terrorists behind the Brussels bombings. Similar postings proliferated after an attempted suicide bombing in Ansbach, Germany, in July. 
 
 Over Christmas a post on Facebook using Modamani’s selfie falsely claimed that he was part of a group who had set fire to a sleeping homeless man at a Berlin subway station. The real suspects – six Syrian asylum seekers and one Libyan – later handed themselves in to the police. 
 
 In another post, Merkel and Modamani were photoshopped on to a picture of the truck used in a terrorist attack on a Berlin Christmas market, along with the words: “They are Merkel’s dead.” 
 
 Modamami’s lawyer, Chan-jo Jun, said: “Every time something happens that has to do with refugees, he is wheeled out as an icon, as Merkel’s model refugee, and smeared with all sorts of criminal acts.” 
 
 He said the original post about the arson case had been shared by around 500 users and was likely to have been seen by 25,000 to 50,000 people. One of the comments underneath the post threatened Modamani with violence, saying: “They should be set on fire instead!!!” 
 
 “Anis Modamani is now defending himself by making use of his personal rights. No person has to put up with defamation and insinuation,” Jun said. 
 
 Petitions have been filed for preliminary injunctions against Facebook’s European subsidiary Facebook Ireland Ltd and a politician with the rightwing populist party Alternative for Germany who uploaded the image linking Modamani to the arson case on his own Facebook page and refused to delete it. 
 
 Facebook has since blocked the truck picture in Germany and removed the original image relating to the arson case, but Jun said the company had failed to delete other postings of the latter image despite repeated attempts to flag it up to moderators. 
 
 A Facebook spokesperson said: “We received a takedown request from Mr Jun alleging that a specific item of content on our platform violates Mr Modamani’s right of personality. Access to that reported content was quickly disabled, so we do not believe there is any basis for him to seek an injunction.” 
 
 The Würzburg court has scheduled a public hearing on 6 February to decide whether an interim injunction should be served against Facebook Europe. The company’s spokesperson would not comment on whether it would send a lawyer to the hearing. 
 
 Germany to force Facebook, Google and Twitter to act on hate speech Read more 
 
 The case comes as Germany’s justice ministry weighs up new laws that would force social media companies to set up clear channels for registering complaints and hire legally qualified ombudsmen to carry out deletions. 
 
 Online platforms that fail meet such legal requirements could be hit with fines calculated on the basis of their global annual turnover or face on-the-spot fines of up to €500,000 if they neglect to remove posts in breach of German hate-speech law within 24 hours. 
 
 Modamani is currently learning German and working at a fast-food restaurant in Berlin. In an interview with the tabloid Bild published last August, he said he had not known who Merkel was when he took the selfie, merely inferring that she must have been an important person because of the throng of people around her. Other Syrians had informed him later, he said. “After that I knew she was the boss of Germany.”
– The concept of "fake news" has infused itself into the regular news cycle, and now a well-known Syrian refugee says he's embroiled in it—and he's suing Facebook as a result, the Guardian reports. Anas Modamani made headlines in September 2015 when he took a selfie with German Chancellor Angela Merkel when she visited a refugee camp in Berlin (another photographer also took a photo of him taking the selfie). While at first the pics were circulated as poignant symbols of the refugee situation in Germany, they quickly became appropriated on social media, using the 19-year-old's face to accompany "news" stories accusing him of taking part in terrorist or otherwise criminal activity, including IDing him as one of the perpetrators of the March bombings in Brussels and linking him to the Christmas market attack in Berlin. His lawyer notes that every time there's a refugee issue, his client is "wheeled out as an icon, as Merkel’s model refugee," and "smeared" as a criminal. When fake claims about Modamani's ties to the Brussels attacks started going around, he tells the BBC that friends told him to just lie low and ignore them, which he did. But the Berlin attack bubbled his likeness back to the surface, and he said he got "fed up," spurring him to file an injunction against a European Facebook subsidiary from publishing any "slanderous image" portraying him as a terrorist or criminal. Facebook says an injunction isn't needed, because it disabled a "specific piece of content" Modamani had asked it to take down, but his lawyer says other pictures are still floating around. "Facebook is doing a very poor job with fake news, but it is especially doing a poor job with illegal fake news," Modamani says. (Facebook promises a crackdown on bogus news posts in Germany.)