Pakistani Judge acquits Man of Spreading UK Riot Misinformation

Authorities in Pakistan have dropped a case against a man who was arrested for allegedly spreading misinformation thought to have sparked the recent UK riots.

Police said they could not find evidence that Farhan Asif was the originator of the news and so were not continuing with the case.

After a hearing on August 26, 2024, the judge ordered the release of the 32-year-old freelance web developer.

The decision came less than a week after Asif was arrested in a raid on his home in Lahore.

Unrest broke out in England and Northern Ireland earlier in August 2024 after false information was spread about the name and identity of the suspect of a stabbing attack in Southport in which three young girls died.

A BBC investigation had linked Asif to a website called Channel3Now, which poses as an American news site.

It posted an article that included a false name for the alleged attacker and wrongly suggested he was an asylum seeker who arrived in the UK by boat in 2023.

The article was shared widely on social media and quickly went viral.

In court, police said Asif was a freelancer at a private channel and that they found he had shared news by a different social media account in the UK.

After UK police had refuted the false information he had shared, Farhan Asif deleted the posts and issued an apology on Channel3Now for sharing the news.

The judge asked Asif a rhetorical question about whether he now realised he should be careful about the information he shares online.

Several people linked to Channel3Now had been tracked down, including a man who lives in Canada.

BBC Verify questioned someone who claimed to be “management” at the site.

That person said the publication of the false name “shouldn’t have happened, but it was an error, not intentional”.

The article falsely claimed that the man who stabbed three young girls to death was an asylum seeker named Ali Al-Shakati who arrived in the UK on a small boat and was “on the MI6 watchlist”.

In actual fact, the suspect was Axel Rudakubana, who was born in Cardiff.

Violent disorder then broke out in Southport before spreading to towns and cities across England and Northern Ireland.

Dozens of police officers were injured and more than a thousand people were arrested.

There were also anti-racist counter-demonstrations attended by thousands of people.

In the past three weeks, more than 500 people have been charged in relation to the disorder and at least 170 sentenced, many being sent to jail.