Bartholomew's Notes

From the Daily Telegraph:

A Pakistani web developer accused of spreading fake news that helped foment anti-immigration and anti-Muslim riots after the Southport stabbings has been arrested in the city of Lahore.

Farhan Asif is alleged to have worked for a sensationalist news aggregation website called Channel3Now, which published false reports about the identity of the knife attacker.

Channel3Now infamously repeated claims that the attacker’s name was Ali Al-Shakati; that he had recently arrived in the UK via boat as an asylim seeker; and that he had been on an MI6 “watchlist”. From an extra detail carried in Dawn, it appears Asif is claiming that he got this false information from another aggregator site, called Kossyderrickent and based in Nigeria. Kossyderrickent has removed the relevant page, but an archived version shows that its write-up included a verbatim Twitter/X post (now deleted) from an account called XCellent78:

Southport Stabbings suspect, Ali-Al-Shakati, was on MI6 watch list and was known to Liverpool mental health services. He was an asylum seeker who came to UK by boat last year.

Those kids have been failed by our pathetic government who are more interested in going after Tommy Robinson on made up terrorism charges than actually stopping real terrorists

These sentences were integrated into the text, rather than being presented as a quote by a third party. XCellent78’s post also included a full stop that is missing on Kossyderrickent, which is suggestive of a cut-and-paste job. The reference to “our pathetic government who are more interested in going after Tommy Robinson” of course is incoherent in a Nigerian context.

Channel3Now repeated much of the first line, but without the comma: “Ali-Al-Shakati was on MI6 watch list and was known to Liverpool mental health services. He was an asylum seeker who came to UK by boat last year.”

The first part of XCellent78’s post also appeared in a post by a member of the UK conspiracy crowd named Bernie Spofforth (@Artemisfornow); Spofforth claims that she copied XCellent78, but her post appeared first and so it would appear to have been the other way round. Spofforth and XCellent78 both have an extra space after the second comma (“Ali-Al-Shakati,  was on MI6…”) that is not present on the Kossyderrickent version. Questions that occur to be include (1) why was the false name given two hyphens?; (2) why does the sentence refer to “MI6 watch list” rather than “MI6’s watch list”, or “an MI6 watch-list”?; and (3) why “came to UK” rather than “came to the UK”?

Spofforth was arrested a couple of weeks ago, and she remains under investigation by Cheshire Police. So far, she appears to be the earliest person to have put the false claims into the public domain. We may never be sure whether she’s the ur-source for all the online repetitions – if the rumour was circulating privately before her post then there may be other lines of transmission. However, we can suggest with some confidence a chain of Spofforth → XCellent78 → Kossyderrickent → Channel3Now. Alternatively, there may have been some unknown source common to both Spofforth and XCellent78 (in which case, Spofforth might have mistook the XCellent78 post for this earlier source).

Channel3Now in Pakistan was the focus of an ITV News investigation that appeared a week ago. However, the arrest is now being seized on by bad actors to re-write the history of the past month; here’s Reform Deputy Leader Richard Tice, extrapolating wildly:

If this is true…..well well well

Seems a gentleman in Pakistan spread the fake news about Southport

Perhaps he was of the Far Left, deliberately creating division ….

What say you ⁦@Keir_Starmer?

Meanwhile, Tommy Robinson:

So as the UK government blamed everyone from the non existent group “EDL”, the “Russians”, even me, for the riots.

It was a Pakistani.

Hundreds jailed, scores attacked by Muslims because of the government lies.

#StarmerMustGo

And Laurence Fox:

I hope the police are grovelling their way to @Artemisfornow front door to apologise for their dreadful abuse of power.

While from GB News:

‘Starmer’s claim that these riots were organised by far right agitatiors was itself, fake news.’

Director of Free Speech Union, Toby Young, reacts to a man in Pakistan identified for allegedly giving a false name for the Southport attacker.

These interpretations are all deeply dishonest, although the motive is to “flood the zone” with a superfically plausible narrative that populists and conspiracists will identify with without needing much or any convincing.

Channel3Now certainly played a role in amplifying the false information: for example, it provided the basis for a post on Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch that was (typically) quietly deleted. However, it did not create the “fake news” – and either way, the site’s involvement does not exonerate those who spread it further or who acted on it by rioting and inciting disorder.

“A Pakistani made them do it” is a pathetic excuse.

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