Pakistan court acquits man over spreading disinformation that led to riots across UK

Lahore: Pakistani court on Monday acquitted a web developer of cyber terrorism charges for his alleged role in disseminating the disinformation that led to race-motivated riots across the UK following the stabbing of three young girls in the city of Southport earlier this month.

Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) last week had arrested Farhan Asif — a 32-year-old freelance web developer associated with the Channel3Now platform that is blamed for posting the disinformation—following the request of the British government to look into the matter.

The FIA had registered a case against Asif, a father of two, under Sections 9 (glorification of offence) and 10A (cyber terrorism) of PECA.

Asif was accused of uploading an article on his website www.channel3now.com with the title “17-year-old Ali Al Shakati arrested in connection with a stabbing incident in Southport England” that contained a false claim about the arrest of a Muslim asylum seeker by police in the stabbing incident in a dance party in Southport on July 29.

“The false name widely shared on social media spurred the far-right section into a violent rioting. Asif admitted to providing misleading information to BBC regarding his accomplices in an attempt to divert blame to others,” the FIA said.

However, on Monday a central court of FIA discharged Asif from the case when FIA officer Najibullah Niazi told it that the suspect, Farhan Asif, had been found “innocent” during the investigation.

“The FIA has found no evidence against Farhan Asif regarding disseminating the alleged fake news that caused riots in the UK,” the FIA officer said in a written statement to the court available with PTI. Upon this, the court acquitted the suspect.

Recent reports aired by UK media identified a little-known platform, Channel3Now, as being the source of the disinformation that claimed the British-born 17-year-old suspect was a Muslim immigrant, who had arrived in the UK on a boat.

However, the assertion by UK broadcaster ITV News that a Pakistani individual was the originator of the false news story has been questioned, both by local law enforcement and other UK media outlets.

Earlier the FIA investigators were of the view that Asif was not the first source of this spurious news, but rather copy-pasted it from a social media post.

They said the disinformation was first published by kossyderrickent.com, a little-known tabloid on July 29. The tabloid posts reports about celebrities and trending topics in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, the US, Zimbabwe and India.

The disinformation was then shared by a UK-based woman, who has previously been involved in spreading disinformation about Covid-19 and climate change, on social media accounts.

The FIA said Asif, upon realising the mistake, issued an apology and deleted the post from all social media accounts but the disinformation kept gaining traction as it kept being shared by other users and garnering views online.

Channel3Now regularly publishes sensational news stories under the pretence of being an American-style TV channel.