Bandung, IndonesiaSentinel.com — The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) of Pakistan has charged a man with a cybercrime offense after allegedly spreading false information online that sparked England riots. According to the FIA statement, the information contained a false claim that a Muslim asylum seeker was arrested by police in connection with a stabbing incident that occurred on July 29, 2024.
After the false information went viral on the internet that wrongly blamed a Muslim migrant, riots started to break out in England.
Police confirmed that the suspect was identified as Farhan Asif, 32, a freelance web developer. Asif was arrested by the police on Monday at his house in the city for further questioning. They said Asif had reposted the false information from social media and claimed that he was not the source.
The police then handed over the case to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), which handles cases relating to cybercrime. Up to this day, it was unclear if Asif’s extradition had been requested by Britain.
Asif is accused of spreading false information online regarding an attacker who stabbed to death three girls and injured 10 other people on July 29 at a dance class in Southport, England, while also sharing pictures of the killings.
The FIA claimed that it started with an X account user called @Channel3Nownews sharing images of a video regarding the stabbing incident, then further posted an article on the website www.channel3now.com stating the false information.
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The false information then led to a violent mosque attack near the stabbing site the next day, fueling more than a week of riots all across England and Northern Ireland, leading to more than 1,000 arrests.
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According to the FIA, it has been proven that Asif was the owner of the account used to spread the false information. Asif admitted that he had written the story and posted it on the website based on information copied from a UK-based social media account without verifying it.
Even though the site’s editor in chief posted an apology on July 31 for the misleading information published in a recent article on the website, the riot already broke out.
It was discovered that the website Asif worked on mostly publishing news from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia in order to draw online traffic from those countries and generate income through Google Ads. According to the police, Asif claimed he could make $1,000 a month by doing this.
