The Pakistani authorities arrested a man this week on charges of cyberterrorism. He spread fake news that helped set off violent riots in Britain. These riots followed a deadly stabbing attack last month.
Racist and anti-immigrant rioters flared for days. Online misinformation falsely identified the suspect in the killing of three young girls at a dance class in Southport. The misinformation claimed the suspect was a Muslim asylum seeker.
Local police said that on Tuesday, they arrested Farhan Asif, a freelance web developer, at his residence in Lahore, Pakistan. He worked for Channel3Now, a news aggregation website that published sensational claims about the Southport attacker.
The site incorrectly reported that the suspect was a 17-year-old Muslim. It claimed he had entered Britain by boat the previous year and was on “an MI6 watch list,” referring to Britain’s foreign intelligence service. In reality, British authorities arrested a 17-year-old who was born and raised in Britain by a Christian family from Rwanda.
Mr. Asif’s Arrest
Mr. Asif’s arrest on cyberterrorism charges came after a meeting on Sunday in Murree, a hill resort in Punjab Province, between the British high commissioner in Pakistan, Jane Marriott, and the chief minister for the state of Punjab, Maryam Nawaz Sharif, along with her father, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
Local police sources indicated that the British authorities requested the arrest, though officials did not confirm this.
The British Embassy in Islamabad declined to comment on whether Britain had asked for the arrest. “This is a matter for the Pakistani authorities,” it said in a brief statement.
Speaking to ITV, a British broadcast network, Mr. Asif denied any responsibility for the violence and downplayed the site’s role in it.
Pakistani officials said that the cybercrime wing of the Federal Investigation Agency raided Mr. Asif’s residence and seized two laptops and a mobile phone.
According to a police report viewed by The New York Times, Mr. Asif admitted during interrogation to sharing false information. But he said that he had merely reposted it from another source without verifying its authenticity.
Channel3Now first apologized after the riots revealed its role and then shut down.
The site, which gave the appearance of being a local American television news station, mostly posted clickbait news articles about crime in the United States, Britain and Australia. A Facebook account for the site revealed that people in Pakistan and the United States managed it.
This news is sourced from [New York Times] and is for informational purposes only.
