The video first emerged in January and was debunked at the time.
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A video has gone viral on social media alleging that a Muslim terrorist group has threatened to burn the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, unless French authorities release Brahim Aouissaoui.
He is a Tunisian citizen who killed three people in a terrorist attack in Nice in 2020.
The video shows three masked men issuing their ultimatum before setting a model of Notre Dame on fire.
They each bear a logo on their sleeves that resembles that of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an Islamist group formerly led by Syria's President Ahmed al-Sharaa.
"Your churches will be burned by God's will," one of the men says.
The video has been shared by numerous accounts on different social media platforms, including European politicians such as right-wing populist Polish MEP Dominik Tarczyński.
However, the video isn't anything new—a reverse image search shows it first started circulating in January 2025 and was swiftly debunked at the time.
Fact-checkers at France24 noted at the time that the video was put out using anonymous channels and not using HTS's usual means of communication. It likely has a pro-Russian origin, according to the outlet.
The HTS logo featured on the sleeves doesn't fully match the real one, and the men appear to speak with an Egyptian accent in Arabic rather than a Syrian one.
Some news outlets appear to have been fooled by the re-emergence of the video, with some of them since taking down their reporting on it.
Its reappearance also prompted some social media users to share old videos of Notre Dame burning, claiming that the terrorists had already carried out their attack. However, the cathedral famously caught fire by accident back in April 2019, which is what is depicted in these posts.
What happened in the Nice attack?
The subject of the false terrorist video is Brahim Aouissaoui, who stabbed three people to death at the Notre-Dame basilica in Nice on 29 October 2020.
One victim was found with a cut to her throat so deep that it appeared to be an attempt to decapitate her, officials said during the aftermath of the attack.
Aouissaoui was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in February of this year.
French authorities attributed the attack, which occurred two weeks after an Islamic terrorist murdered school teacher Samuel Paty, to Islamic extremism.