A Pakistani web developer accused of spreading fake news that helped foment anti-immigration and anti-Muslim riots after the Southport stabbings has been arrested in the city of Lahore.
Farhan Asif is alleged to have worked for a sensationalist news aggregation website called Channel3Now, which published false reports about the identity of the knife attacker.
In the hours after three girls were killed at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class last month, the site falsely reported that the suspect was “a 17-year-old asylum-seeker” named Ali al-Shakati.
It claimed he had arrived in the UK by boat last year and was on “an MI6 watch list”.
The accusation was widely shared on social media and blamed for contributing to riots which raged across the country.
Report had ‘no connection to chaos’
An ITV News investigation last week accused Mr Asif of being a significant figure in the website and operating it from his high-end housing estate in the Pakistani city.
Confronted by journalists, Mr Asif denied being responsible for the violence, saying: “I don’t know how such a small article or a minor Twitter account could cause widespread confusion.
“Channel3Now mentioned that [the suspect was] a Muslim and an immigrant, but this has no connection to the chaos, which is being caused by people in his own country. If there was misinformation, it could have been addressed calmly. Why was there such an uproar?”
The site has since been shut down.
Asif denies writing article
On Tuesday, police in the Pakistani city of Lahore confirmed they had detained Mr Asif and handed him over to the Federal Investigation Agency.
A senior police official told the Telegraph that Mr Asif had been taken into custody on the accusation of spreading fake news that incited violence.
An official with the Federal Investigation Agency confirmed the Pakistani national, in his mid-30s, had been handed over for allegedly inciting violence online.
“He was running a news website. Interrogation is underway,” the official said.
“He likely will be charged under the cyber terrorism section of Prevention of Electronic Crime(s) Act and will be produced before the relevant court after the interrogation is completed.”
Police sources told Dawn, a leading Pakistani daily, that their own investigations had led them to conclude Mr Asif was not the source of the false news, and he had copied and pasted it from a social media post.
The ITV investigation found that though the Channel3Now internet domain records were anonymous, Mr Asif was listed on records for several linked websites with similar names, layouts and content, including Fox3Now and Fox7Now.
He denied writing the inflammatory article, saying he focused on US crime stories.
He told ITV News: “My understanding is that the article was deleted a day later, or it might have been done even earlier… there was a full article with an apology.
“It stated that it shouldn’t have happened, that it was a mistake by our team, and that they have been fired.”
“I think four people were fired,” he added. “The information search team, consisting of three to four people who worked on it together, were all fired.”