Ahmed Benyahia and Youssef Abraoui say they will pursue joint legal action after being falsely identified online in the Burgos murder case. Police have detained six people as alleged perpetrators, yet the images continue to circulate abroad.
The post appeared at 15:52 on Saturday 17 October, pairing a report about two teenage suspects with photographs of Ahmed Benyahia and Youssef Abraoui. The men say they will pursue joint legal action over the false accusations. The real investigation concerned the death of an 83-year-old woman, found bound and gagged at her home on Calle Vitoria 181 in Burgos’s Gamonal neighbourhood on 13 October.
Benyahia is a 20-year-old student in Barcelona. Abraoui is a 29-year-old taxi driver from Manresa. The post attributed to an X account named Álex Martínez wrongly identified them as Mohammed Chekraoui and Ayoub Haiboub, aged 16 and 17, and blamed them for the killing. Police instead focused on two alleged direct perpetrators, aged 16 and 17, who lived in Burgos. The autopsy concluded that the woman died of respiratory failure after being gagged and restrained, which prevented her from reaching the oxygen equipment she used daily. Police initially treated the death as a homicide linked to a robbery after finding the home disturbed, with no apparent forced entry.
By 21 October, police had detained six people in connection with the case. Police sources said five were being investigated for homicide and violent robbery in an occupied home, while the sixth was investigated for receiving stolen property. The four later arrests included one minor; adult cases went to the competent court, while the minor’s case was referred to the juvenile section of the Burgos Provincial Public Prosecutor’s Office. The two initial suspects were arrested on 17 October, four days after the death.
Police had detained six people as suspects in the murder investigation, and both men had publicly denied the claims. Yet the images and accusations continued to circulate, including in Morocco and Algeria, as well as France and Italy. The men say posts in those countries still implicated them. RTVE reported that the false posts also linked the men to an alleged Maghrebi origin.
The reach has left consequences in their daily lives. Benyahia works at a school where children and families may have seen the posts. Abraoui says he has found himself wondering whether passengers recognise him when they look at him in the rear-view mirror. Benyahia has described anxiety after seeing the post and fear about going out in case someone recognised him.
Several high-following accounts shared the material. Núcleo Nacional, a far-right movement, was among them. The Vox youth organisation Revuelta also circulated it. So did the outlet El Imperial España. El Norte de Castilla reported that the posts spread within minutes of the first arrests; many accounts later removed them after the claims were exposed as false. Burgos Government Subdelegate Pedro de la Fuente condemned the false attribution and said that falsely assigning responsibility for the robbery to the two men could itself constitute a crime. The persistence of online accusations has also featured in a separate Spanish defamation case covered in an earlier court report.
Benyahia reported the post at the Mossos d’Esquadra station in Nou Barris, Barcelona. The Catalan police have opened an investigation, the force confirmed. Abraoui is collecting and checking posts before making a complaint at the Manresa station.
The two men say they intend to pursue the case together. Abraoui also plans to file a criminal complaint and take civil action. They have not established who was behind the post that started the accusations; both believe the choice of their images was arbitrary and linked to the political climate.
