Amended – see comments
From BBC News:
A man has been found guilty of making sexual remarks to a group of girls aged between 12 and 14 in Dundee before grabbing and pushing one of them to the ground.
Ilia Belov, 22, claimed he confronted the girls after receiving abusive remarks and said he saw one of the girls with a knife in her waistband before the assault.
His sister Nadjedzha Belova, 20, previously admitted assaulting a 13-year-old girl by seizing and pulling her hair, dragging her to the ground, and striking her on the head to her injury during the incident.
A clip of the girl brandishing a knife and an axe went viral last year, widely interpreted as either a brave young girl defending her sister from a predator or a feral racist child threatening an innocent migrant couple going about their business.
The latter version was promoted, perhaps unexpectedly, by the Daily Mail, which ran an “EXCLUSIVE” by Douglas Walker. As introduced by Walker:
The ugly video clip from a Dundee housing estate in which a schoolgirl brandished a knife and an axe soon went viral… Now we can reveal the man being threatened is a family man who has been living in the UK for four years – and who was accompanied by his wife on the way to the shops when the incident occurred.
Far from being fresh off a cross-channel small inflatable, as implied by [Tommy] Robinson and [Elon] Musk, Fatos Ali Dumana, 21, says he came to Britain legally from Bulgaria and he and his wife have an eight-month-old baby.
…In the video the girl – wearing torn jogging bottoms and a navy t-shirt – is being kept away from Mr Dumana by another young female claiming to be her sister.
…Another female out of shot – believed to be his wife Yulianova – then utters something in Bulgarian before he responds in the same dialect.
So how come Fatos Ali Dumana in the Daily Mail is now Ilia Belov? And why does Daily Mail version suggest that his wife, rather than his sister, was involved? And why is the voice “believed to be his wife”, when surely “Dumana” must know for sure either way? Although the “exclusive” was billed as “the truth”, Walker appears to hedge his bets by stating that
Police have officially refused to divulge the nationality or identity of Mr Dumana or what prompted the disagreement.
My first impression was that some completely different person had put themselves forward to the Daily Mail, especially given that the man looks somewhat different in photos accompanying the story than in the BBC report. However, it is the same person: other photos from outside the court (where, unlike many defendants, it appears he chose to pose for the cameras rather than rush furtively past) show that he has a distinctive tattoo on the left side of his neck which is not visible on the BBC report and which has been transposed onto his right side in an image published by the Daily Mail. Questions, however, remain.
Left: As “Fatos Ali Dumana” in the Daily Mail; right: as Ilia Belov on BBC News.
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