PAKISTAN

Lahore police detain man in connection with UK disinformation probe

Asif Chaudhry 

Published August 20, 2024 

DAWN

LAHORE: 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 Dawn 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.

Published in Dawn, August 20th, 2024