Defendants Enable ISIS to Recruit Members, Plan, and Execute Attacks
LOS ANGELES, California-October 12, 2017- Kim Copeland, mother of Brodie Copeland and wife of Sean Copeland, the American father and son who were killed in the Nice, France attack on July 14, 2016, filed a lawsuit in federal court on Thursday, October 12 naming Google, Facebook, and Twitter as defendants for providing material support to the terrorist group ISIS.
Representing Copeland is Keith Altman and Ari Kresch of 1-800-LAW-FIRM of Southfield, Michigan. The lawsuit was filed in Federal Court Northern District of California.
The lawsuit asserts that the defendants knowingly permitted ISIS to use their platforms for recruiting purposes, spreading propaganda and raising funds to carry-out terror attacks. Through the use of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (Google), ISIS has acquired over 30,000 foreign recruits, countless donations from supporters and a level of prosperity that would have been unachievable without the aid of the defendants’ social media sites.
Several social media postings hinted about the planned violence in Nice approximately nine days prior to the attack. The ISIS perpetrated attack on Bastille Day resulted in the death of 84 people including 51-year-old Sean Copeland and his 11-year-old son Brodie Copeland.
“Social media companies continue to allow terrorists to operate, despite reasonable steps that could be undertaken to stop them. Google, Twitter, and Facebook not only continue to let terror groups like ISIS use their sites to tout hate and plan these attacks, they also profit from it,” said Altman. From videos of Westerners being beheaded to other terrorist propaganda, each of the defendants place advertisements on ISIS content—profiting directly from their postings. In at least the case of Google’s YouTube, advertising revenue is shared with ISIS.
Altman and Kresch also represent victims and family members of other attacks including Barcelona, Dallas, Istanbul, Orlando, Paris, and San Bernardino.
Read the entire complaint here.