Lahore:

A Pakistani man appeared in court Wednesday to face charges of cyber terrorism after allegedly spreading disinformation on his clickbait website thought to have fuelled anti-immigration riots in Britain. 

Farhan Asif was accused of publishing an article on his Channel3Now website falsely claiming that a Muslim asylum seeker was suspected in a deadly knife attack on children in the United Kingdom. 

UK authorities have blamed online misinformation for sparking days of riots which targeted mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers as well as police officers and other properties.

“He is a 31-year-old software engineer with no journalism credentials, apart from running the Channel3Now website, which served as a source of income for him,” a senior official at Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency told AFP on condition of anonymity.

“Initial investigations indicate that his sole intent was to make money through clickbait content.”

Asif appeared at a Lahore district court on Wednesday charged with cyber terrorism and was remanded to custody for one day, the official added.

The article with the false information was published on Channel3Now just hours after the attack and was widely cited in viral social media posts.

More than a dozen English towns and cities saw unrest and riots after the July 29 knife attack that killed three girls during a dance class in Southport.

The man charged with murder and attempted murder over the stabbing spree, Axel Rudakubana, was born in Britain to parents who hail from Rwanda, an overwhelmingly Christian country.

Officials have blamed far-right elements for helping to stir up the disorder.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

London:

British authorities have now arrested more than 1,000 people following days of rioting involving violence, arson and looting as well as racist attacks targeting Muslims and migrants, a national policing body said on Tuesday.

The riots, which followed the killings of three young girls in the northern English town of Southport, began after the July 29 attack was wrongly blamed on an Islamist migrant based on online misinformation.

Violence broke out in cities across England and also in Northern Ireland, but there have been fewer instances of unrest since last week after efforts to identify those involved were ramped up.

Many have been swiftly jailed, with some receiving long sentences

The National Police Chiefs’ Council said in its latest update that 1,024 had been arrested and 575 charged across the UK.

Those arrested include a 69-year-old accused of vandalism in Liverpool and a 11-year-old boy in Belfast.

A 13-year-old girl pleaded guilty to violent disorder at Basingstoke Magistrates’ Court, prosecutors said, having been seen on July 31 punching and kicking the entrance to a hotel for asylum seekers.

“This alarming incident will have caused genuine fear amongst people who were being targeted by these thugs – and it is particularly distressing to learn that such a young girl participated in this violent disorder,” prosecutor Thomas Power said.

The last time Britain witnessed widespread rioting was in 2011, when the fatal shooting of a Black man by police triggered several days of street violence.

Fast and tough judicial action was viewed as helping quell the unrest in 2011, when around 4,000 people were arrested over several weeks.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)