Distress of man incorrectly named as Sydney attacker
AN AUSTRALIAN university student falsely identified as the perpetrator of the Bondi Junction mass stabbing attack that left six people dead has spoken of his “distress” at being wrongly linked to the rampage.
Online trolls falsely named Ben Cohen, 20, on Saturday night as the man behind the deadly shopping centre attack that unfolded earlier that day, sharing photos of the student on X/Twitter, where his name began trending.
It appears that the fabricated claim originated on a small account sharing almost exclusively anti-Israel content, while numerous other users suggested the attack could be connected to Israel or Gaza. Other accounts with larger followings then amplified the untrue claim that Cohen could be connected.
Many of the posts on X drew attention to what users perceived to be the Sydneysider’s Jewish identity due to his surname.
New South Wales Police named the actual culprit, who was shot dead, as 40-year-old Joel Cauchi on Sunday morning.
By that time, Channel Seven, a major Australian network, had incorrectly identified Cohen as the suspect. The broadcaster later apologised. It has emerged that the false speculation can be traced back to an account that posts almost exclusively antiIsrael content and that a pro-Kremlin social media influencer currently residing in the Russian consulate in Sydney appears to have been instrumental in spreading the untrue theory. Simeon Boikov, who posts online under the moniker “Aussie Cossack” and has nearly 38,000 followers on that platform alone, was seemingly responsible for subsequently amplifying the original claim, which went on to reach hundreds of thousands of people online and via the messaging app Telegram, according to the BBC. In a post that appears to have been deleted, Boikov reportedly said: “Unconfirmed reports identify the Bondi attacker as Benjamin Cohen. Cohen? Really? And to think so many commentators tried to initially blame Muslims.”
“I never falsely suggested anything,” Boikov told the BBC. In fact, he insisted, he was the “first large platform to warn” the false speculation around Cohen was “unconfirmed”.
Commenting on the way misinformation can be spread by “seeded” narratives, which are picked up by larger accounts, digital disinformation expert Marc Owen-Jones said: “It’s less obvious and suspicious than if an influential and known partisan account was to initially tweet it.
“Then more established accounts can use this ‘seeded’ narrative as if it’s a legitimate vox pop, and claim they are just ‘reporting’ what’s being said online.”
Cohen, who studies computer science at the University of Technology Sydney, said: “It’s extremely disappointing to me to see people mindlessly propagating this information like this without even the slightest thought put into fact-checking. But what’s even more disappointing for me is a major news network doing this – using my name without waiting for a statement from the police to verify this, or going out to try and verify it themselves.”
He added: “This whole incident has been highly distressing and disappointing to myself and my family.”
The false claim can be traced to an antiIsrael Twitter account