'Dead Syrian' Facebook post spotlights German refugee fears

A Facebook post about the death of a Syrian refugee in Germany sparked a storm of reaction this week, only for the author to admit making it up, highlighting a rash of online rumours fuelled by a record asylum seeker influx.
At first glance, it was all too credible: a 24-year-old Syrian had been queuing for days in the cold at Berlin's notoriously chaotic refugee registration centre Lageso even though he was ill.
Homeless and penniless, he finally went into cardiac arrest on the way to hospital and died, according to the account posted on Wednesday by kind-hearted volunteer Dirk Voltz, who had taken the man in.

But Voltz in fact fabricated the tale, duping not just national media and authorities but also Moabit Hilft, the neighbourhood aid group that he volunteers with.
"I acted out of a relationship based on trust," said a dismayed Diana Henniges, from the aid group, who had confirmed the purported death to national media before Voltz finally admitted he had invented it.
In a gripping "live" text-message style exchange with a friend published online, Voltz said he rang for an ambulance as the man was suffering from a "39.4 degree fever, chills and could no longer speak".

He told his friend to find an Arabic speaker quickly to communicate with the refugee, but after his friend gave him a number, he said it was too late and the Syrian had died.

Moabit Hilft went to town with the "exchange", even publishing an obituary on Twitter: "You survived so much. You did not survive Lageso. You caught a fever, chills and cardiac arrest. You died last night. We are crying."
But as national media began reporting on the "tragedy", emergency services said there was no trace of such a case.
Finally, Voltz confessed to police he had, in a drunken stupor, lied.
"It is indicative of this overly excited, sometimes hysterical time, but also of the state of Lageso, that so many people have immediately believed such a death," Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel said in an editorial.