Man arrested in Pakistan after website accused of fuelling race riots in UK

Reporting by Iggy Ostanin and Dan Howells

Pakistani police have arrested a journalist in Lahore who is accused of helping to run a fake news website, after he was confronted by ITV News about accusations that an article it had published fuelled race riots in the UK following the stabbing of three young girls.

Farhan Asif was taken into custody in Lahore, according to a law enforcement official, following an ITV News investigation revealing his links to a website which amplified misinformation that the suspect in the Southport killings was an immigrant who arrived in the UK on a boat.

The obscure website, called Channel3Now, regularly publishes hyperbolic news stories under the pretence of being an American-style TV channel.

In the hours after children were killed at a Taylor Swift dance class in Southport last month, the site reported that the suspect was "a 17-year-old asylum-seeker" named Ali al-Shakati who arrived in the UK on a boat last year and was on "an MI6 watch list". The article was shared widely on social media, with the claim repeated millions of times.

Police investigators in Lahore want the government of Pakistan to form a joint team to study the investigations made in the ITV News report, Dawn reported.

The news site claimed that Asif is a freelance web developer who copy-pasted a social media post without realising the potential impact.

"The allegations should not be taken lightly as they can have a far-reaching impact on the Pakistani community in the UK, in particular, and Muslims in general," an unnamed police officer told Dawn.

Asif denied being responsible for the violence which erupted following the spurious claims when confronted by ITV News, saying "I don’t know how such a small article or a minor Twitter account could cause widespread confusion."

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"[The website] 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?"

In two conversations with ITV News, Asif claimed several times to be a freelance writer who had nothing to do with the article and focused on writing about crimes in the USA.

But records unearthed by ITV News revealed he plays a significant role in a network of news websites that have promoted falsehoods.

It is not possible to tell who the Channel3Now website is registered to as its domain information has been kept anonymous - but it shares a common advertising account with several other 'news' websites, including two called Fox3Now and Fox7Now.

The ownership records of these other sites remained public, with both registered in the name of Farhan Asif.

Fox3Now and Fox7Now were subject to legal action last year when the American broadcaster Fox successfully fought to regain control of those web addresses on intellectual property grounds.

Court papers name Farhan Asif as one of the owners, adding that there was "plausible evidence that the disputed domain names are subject to common control".

Fox3Now and Channel3Now appear to share some of the same videos on social media accounts. And their websites share near-identical logos and layouts suggesting further evidence of a link between the publishers.

Fox3 has been slammed for promoting falsehoods. In 2022 it reported that a gunman was on the loose at a shopping centre in Jersey City in the United States, prompting panic and confusion. But the sounds which the site claimed to be gunfire were in fact caused by a faulty popcorn machine.

Referring to the falsehoods reported about Southport, Asif told ITV News last week: "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-four people who worked on it together, were all fired."

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