A video showing Islamic extremists threatening to burn down Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris has gone viral on social media, demanding the release of Brahim Aouissaoui (also spelled Ibrahim Alisaoui or Issaoui), the Tunisian national convicted of killing three people in a 2020 knife attack at Notre Dame Basilica in Nice. The footage, which first surfaced in January 2025 with false claims linking it to Syria's Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, has been recirculated on social media over the past few days, 2025, sparking renewed alarm amid ongoing global tensions over the Israel-Hamas war since October 2023.
The video features masked individuals in keffiyehs speaking Arabic, stating: "We demand the French government release our brother Ibrahim Alisaoui. If he is not released, the wrath of God will fall upon your people here in France; your next churches will burn." It explicitly ties the threat to Aouissaoui, who carried out the October 29, 2020, attack at the Nice basilica, stabbing to death two women and one man in what French authorities classified as an Islamic terrorist attack.
