Terrifying Attack in Russian Classroom

‘They took out knives & stabbed the teacher’:

Witnesses recall horrifying Perm school rampage

‘They took out knives & stabbed the teacher’: Witnesses recall horrifying Perm school rampage

Detention of teenager Lev Bidzhakov, one of the attackers. © t.me/ breakingmash / Global Look Press

Fourth graders at a school in central Russia have described their horror after two masked teenagers armed with knives stormed into their classroom and stabbed the teacher before attacking students.

At least 14 students and a teacher were injured in a knife rampage at a school in the Russian city of Perm.

“It was the third class. We had arts and crafts, when suddenly two big guys came in,” said one fourth grader at school number 127, recalling the events for Komsomolskaya Pravda daily.

“They were wearing black trousers and sweatshirts. They had their mouths covered with dark masks and they wore sunglasses. Each of them had a knife,” the boy said.

The weapons were not just average kitchen knives, but “looked professional, made for hunting,” he explained.

When one of the attackers saw the teacher reaching for a phone, he ran up and grabbed her, the student recalled. In the meantime, another guy rushed at the children and started seizing them indiscriminately.

“I ran out to the street, there were sweepers. I told them about what happened and ran to the hospital with other kids. Other classmates ran to the shopping mall to shelter and call for help.”

Stricken with panic and fear, many of the primary school children, aged between nine and ten, could not escape the classroom right away, as one of the assailants was blocking the doorway. Another witness recalled the harrowing moment when he and his classmates started to scream for help after their teacher was stabbed.

“A high school student stood at the door and didn’t let us out, when we tried to sneak out. When we came up to him, he put out the knife,” the boy told Life.

The second teenager then began to target the children. “When he hit me with the knife, I moved to the window and when another came up to me, he showed with the gestures that he wouldn’t beat me, because I raised my hands.”

Eventually the children managed to escape the classroom. “They [the attackers] did everything without a word and didn’t call each other by their names,” the boy said.

Teenager Lev Bidzhakov, one of the attackers. © t.me / breakingmash / Global Look Press

Local authorities said they are currently following a line of inquiry that the teenagers initially had some kind of a conflict with each other that escalated. The teacher and fourth graders apparently tried to separate the two when the brawl between a high school student and former student spilled into their classroom.

However, Inessa Titova, the mother of one girl who was in the classroom at the moment of the attack, told RT there was “no fight” between the students.

“Those two guys wearing black masks entered the classroom, and without further ado, unsheathed the knives and cut the teacher’s throat, as my daughter says,” she said.

Idiot takes selfie after slitting teacher's throat

“Everyone worries about their class teacher and two boys who were transferred to an emergency room after the surgeries,” the mother said. “Parents are shocked and panicked. We don’t know how to be now and how to live further.”

The attack left 15 people injured. The teacher and two teens remain in a critical condition.

“The children are very scared. They don’t want to go to school or talk about what happened, trying to change the subject,” Inessa said.

Obviously, the children need some serious counselling, but they also need some serious answers. To suggest it was a fight that spilled over into the classroom is absurd. This was a planned attack.

Facebook Privacy Under Spotlight as Syrian Refugee Loses ‘Fake News’ Case

 Syrian refugee Anas Modamani takes a selfie with German Chancellor Angela Merkel 

© Fabrizio Bensch / Reuters

The question of online privacy and what Facebook is, and isn’t, doing to protect its users is under the spotlight once again after a Syrian refugee lost a case against the social network over fake news posts alleging he was a terrorist.

Anas Modamani, a refugee from just outside Damascus who arrived in Germany in July 2015, after crossing from Turkey to Greece in a small boat, gained notoriety when a photograph of him taking a selfie with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in September 2015 went viral. It was soon used to falsely claim the 19-year-old was a terrorist.

The photo was used in posts and stories alleging the refugee was responsible for the Berlin Christmas market attack in December, the Brussels terror attack in March 2016, and for setting a homeless man on fire in Berlin. Modamani soon became a target for racism and hate as his image was used as a symbol of Germany’s refugee policy.

"I cried when I saw it," Modamani told Al Jazeera. "I want to live in peace in Germany. I fled from the war and bloodshed in Syria to live in safety... I was too afraid to leave my house after I saw what people wrote about me.”

Modamani’s lawyer, Chan-jo Jun, said in January that Modamani was “fighting back based on his personal rights so that no person is able to slander him or accuse him of crimes.”

On Tuesday, however, a German judge ruled that Facebook didn’t have to seek out and delete defamatory posts as it wasn’t the “perpetrator or participant in the smears.”

"Facebook didn’t adopt the statements and the postings as its own opinion," Presiding Judge Volkmar Seipel said, as cited by Bloomberg. "It’s not Facebook that’s claiming these things when users are uploading the picture."

Jun accused Facebook of failing to take sufficient action to stop the defamatory images and posts from being shared. "We need to decide whether to allow Facebook to do whatever it wants – to keep anything online that elicits traffic," Jun said after the ruling. "Lawmakers need to step in."

The ruling appears at odds with Facebook’s policy of removing content it deems inappropriate. The social media giant has come under fire for censoring art, and for failing to remove reported sexually explicit images of children.

Mark Zuckerberg’s company has also been criticized for selectively removing posts it says incite violence, and not removing others. It has reportedly worked with the Israeli government to remove and suspend content and accounts at its request.

Facebook has also been involved in the fake news debate. During the US presidential elections, it was criticized for allowing the spread of fake news stories.

In January, the European Commission warned it would face legal action if it did not eliminate fake news. The company has since begun flagging content it believes is “disputed.”

So it can, and does, flag content that is disputed, but claimed that it shouldn't be held accountable for such disputed content. It seems impossible for FB to be able to identify every item of fake or questionable info, so I'm not sure how far they can be pushed to do so, but there is a need for them to try; it's already approaching the point where one can hardly believe what he reads on FB. 

I am curious, though, why he didn't sue some of the people who actually posted his picture with stories of terrorism. He might have had more success there.