(Lahore) A Pakistani man appeared in a Lahore court on Wednesday on charges of cyberterrorism, accused of spreading false information online that fuelled anti-migrant and Islamophobic violence in the United Kingdom.
Farhan Asif, who was remanded in custody for one day, was accused of publishing an article on his Channel3Now website falsely claiming that a Muslim asylum seeker was suspected of carrying out the deadly Southport knife attack on July 29 that killed three girls.
British authorities blamed the false information on the internet for triggering days of riots that targeted mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers.
“He is a 31-year-old computer engineer who has no experience in journalism except that he ran the Channel3Now website, which served as his source of income,” a senior official of Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency told AFP, speaking anonymously.
Initial investigations indicated that his only intention was to make money through content that generates a lot of traffic.
The article in question, published on the Channel3Now website a few hours after the Southport attack, quickly went viral.
More than a dozen English towns have seen riots following the July 29 knife attack in Southport (northeast).
The man charged with murder and attempted murder, Axel Rudakubana, was actually born in Cardiff, Wales, to a family originally from Rwanda, according to British media reports.