Police arrest man in Pakistan accused of fueling riots in Britain

Ten more people were wounded in the stabbing attack on a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in the northern English city of Southport.

In the hours after the attack, reports circulated online that claimed incorrectly that the attacker was a Muslim and an asylum seeker who had entered Britain illegally.

Far-right protesters took to the streets, some chanting “we want our country back.” Rioters attacked a hotel housing asylum seekers, threw bricks at mosques and clashed with police, leaving Muslims and people of color in Britain feeling vulnerable and scared.

While British authorities have moved quickly against alleged rioters, arresting more than 1,000 suspects and charging nearly 500, the FIA, which investigates cybercrimes, was focusing on a claim that a social media post written thousands of miles from Britain helped fuel the mayhem.

An article published by Channel3Now after the attack claimed incorrectly that police in Britain had arrested “a Muslim asylum seeker” in the stabbing attack, investigators said in a report dated Tuesday. The article identified the suspect as “Ali al-Shakati” and said he arrived in Britain by boat in 2023.

The report was shared “millions of times,” on social media, Britain’s ITV News reported.

That claim, they said, was “widely shared” to social media and “spurred the far right into violent rioting.”

Asif earned money from views generated by posting about crime in Britain, the United States and Australia, investigators said. They accused Asif of using the Channel3 Now X account “with the intent to glorify the incident.” His actions, they said, “created a sense of fear” in Britain and “caused damage to the reputation of Pakistan.”

Channel3Now has been taken offline. The website has not tweeted since Aug 11.

Police began their probe after ITV News reported that the riots had been amplified by disinformation online, including by an account it said was “partly based in Pakistan,” Faisal Kamran, Lahore’s police deputy inspector general, told The Washington Post.

ITV News reported last week that Channel3Now was “one of the accounts most clearly responsible for amplifying” the claim that the attacker was a Muslim asylum seeker.

The suspect is, in fact, Axel Rudakubana, a British citizen born in Cardiff to parents from Rwanda who was 17 at the time of the attack, authorities say. A judge agreed to lift the anonymity usually afforded minors in part to curb the false reports driving violence. (Rudakubana has since turned 18.)

ITV News showed footage of its journalists in Pakistan confronting Asif about “the fake news article.” The outlet said Channel3 Now “regularly publishes hyperbolic news stories under the pretense of being an American-style TV channel.”

Asif reportedly told the journalists that the article had been deleted and those responsible for publishing it had been fired.

“I don’t know how such a small article or a minor Twitter account could cause widespread confusion,” he said, according to ITV News.

Investigators told The Post that they summoned Asif for questioning and seized two laptops and one cellphone. During the search, they reported, X account for Channel3Now appeared to be “active” on the recovered digital media. Asif told police he had hired four people to help run the website but that he had since fired those individuals, investigators said.

“We found that he works alone and he has not hired anyone,” Kamran said. “It was a lie.”

Asif “confessed his guilt,” the police report said, and claimed he obtained the information from another tweet and reposted it. Investigators noted Asif “failed to” verify “the authenticity” of the material. He has never been to Britain, the report said.

Asif is due to appear in court on Thursday, Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper reported.

William Booth contributed to this report.