More than a week after the UK witnessed widespread riots in the aftermath of the fatal stabbing of three young girls in Southport, law enforcement agencies began probing claims that the disinformation originated from a website with a footprint in Pakistan.
Reports aired by UK media identified little-known platform Channel3Now as 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.
UK broadcaster ITV News had asserted that a Pakistani individual was the originator of the false news story. Farhan Asif was taken into custody by Lahore police last week and later handed over to the Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) cybercrime wing.
On August 21, a judicial magistrate allowed the FIA Asif’s one-day physical custody for being suspected of uploading a misleading news article on the website of Channel3Now.
Upon the completion of his remand today, Asif was presented before Judicial Magistrate Hamidur Rehman Nasir.
A request seeking Asif’s acquittal from the case was submitted before the judge by Najibullah Niazi, a sub-inspector at the FIA’s cybercrime reporting centre.
The request recalled that Asif was arrested on August 20 and was interrogated during his five-day physical remand.“The suspect was found innocent in the said case,” it concluded, urging the court to issue orders that he be discharged from the case.
Police have detained a Pakistani citizen, accused of having a 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, law enforcement sources told Dawn.
However, investigators want the government to form a joint investigation team to investigate the allegations levelled by UK broadcaster ITV News, which had accused a Lahore-based freelancer of being the source of the misinformation that the 17-year-old British-born suspect was an immigrant who arrived in UK.
Officers privy to developments told Dawn that their own investigations led them to the conclusion that Farhan Asif — a freelance web developer associated with the Channel3Now platform that is blamed for posting the disinformation — was not the source of this spurious news, but rather copy-pasted it from a social media post.
“The allegations should not be taken lightly as they can have a far-reaching impact on Pakistani community in the UK, in particular, and Muslims in general,” a police officer told on Monday.
Investigators want JIT to probe ‘serious’ allegations; say Channel3Now freelancer was not ‘primary source’ of spurious claims
According to the officer, investigators believe that the disinformation was first published by kossyderrickent.com, a little-known tabloid on July 29th.
The tabloid posts reports about celebrities and trending topics in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, 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 X (formerly Twitter), the officer said.
The X account of the woman in question also seems to be inactive, with the last post being made on Aug 7.
The officer said that police were looking into Asif, whose social media accounts had now been disabled, adding that he had no criminal record or suspicious transaction history.
He said Asif, upon realising the mistake, had 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.
