French police have arrested a man attempting to commit murder and rescued his victim after Facebook alerted authorities to a livestream of the attack, officials said on Wednesday.
The social media site alerted the authorities to the livestream, which showed a 37-year-old man holding a handgun beating another man violently and threatening to kill him. The livestream was broadcast just after 5am local time on Saturday.
Police used the footage and images from the perpetrator’s Facebook account in the live stream to track down the man, who is based in a rural area of the Britanny region in northwestern France.
The gendarme officers quickly tracked down the man, entering the attackers house at 7.20am and arresting him.
The victim was found with a swollen face and in a state of shock.
The attacker was sentenced to five years in prison, with one year suspended, after admitting to carrying out the attack and sharing images of it on social media.
Facebook alerted authorities through the French government’s Pharos platform, which was established in 2009 to report illegal and unwanted content found online.
The attacker had already been imprisoned for a similar case, La Figaro reported.
