BARCELONA, Spain – Reports claiming that a Syrian refugee -- who shot to fame after he was tripped by a Hungarian camerawoman -- was a member of a radical Islamist group are a “hoax,” said the head of the Spanish football club that brought the asylum-seeker to Madrid and gave him a job.
The denial came after the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syria said earlier this week that Osama Abdul Mohsen, 52, had been a member of the radical al-Nusrah Front and had fought the Kurds on many fronts.
The El Pais newspaper on Tuesday quoted Miguel Angel Galan, the director of the Madrid-based National Soccer Coach Training Center (Cenafe), as saying pictures that appeared on a Facebook account under the name Osama Abdul Mohsen are a “hoax.”
“He doesn’t have a Facebook account,” Galan said.
The PYD published a picture of Abdul Mohsen, claiming it was from his Facebook page before he closed it down earlier this year, where he identifies himself as a member of the al-Nusra Front. It said he had fought the Kurds near Amudeh, Serekaniye and Afrin.
The video footage of Abdul Mohsen being kicked by a camerawoman on the Hungary-Serbia border went viral and prompted uproar around the world, earning him a job in Spain, where he was welcomed by Real Madrid footballer Cristiano Ronaldo.
The PYD claimed that Abdul Mohsen had fought with the radical Islamist group in Syria before leaving for Turkey with his family in the spring of 2015.
It also claimed he was involved in the violent suppression of Kurdish riots in the city of Qamishlo in 2004, following a football match where more than 50 Kurds were killed by Syrian security forces.
Abdul Mohsen was the coach of al-Fatwa club in Deir Ezzor from 2004 to 2010.
Over the past few days the alleged Facebook profile of Abdul Mohsen, in which he appears near an al-Nusra Front flag, has been shared tens of thousands of times.
Cenafe has used money from its advertising budget to pay for an apartment in Getafe, a Madrid suburb, where Abdul Mohsen is staying with two of his children.
His wife and two other children are still in Turkey, where the family had been for a year after escaping the war in Syria.
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