FIA Cybercrime Wing Charges Lahore Man for Inciting UK Riots
Farhan Asif was arrested on Tuesday night in Lahore's DHA area
On Wednesday, the Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) cybercrime wing charged a Lahore resident man in connection with recent violent anti-immigrant riots in the United Kingdom.
The man identified as Farhan Asif, was arrested on Tuesday night in Lahore’s DHA area and was handed over to the FIA cybercrime wing for interrogation.
As reported, an application for the suspect’s remand was submitted to the district court, with police requesting a 14-day remand “for recovery and completion of investigation”.
However, the judicial magistrate only granted one day’s remand, directing the investigating officer to “complete the investigation positively” and to produce the suspect in court on August 22 (Thursday).
Asif faces allegations related to “technical assistance of cybercrime,” specifically for disseminating false information about the identity of the individual allegedly responsible for the knife attack that claimed the lives of three minor girls on July 29, 2024, in the UK.
Reports aired by UK media identified little-known platform Channel3Now as the source of the disinformation that claimed the British-born 17-year-old suspect was a Muslim immigrant who had arrived in the UK on a boat.
However, UK broadcaster ITV News asserted that a Pakistani individual was the originator of the false news story.
The case against Farhan Asif has been filed under Sections 9 and 10A of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016, in the complaint of “technical assistant of cybercrime”.
The first information report (FIR) stated that Farhan Asif, who works for a news platform based in Pakistan, confessed to the crime which included sharing photos of the stabbing and an article about the incident on X.
“The article shared by Asif falsely claimed that a 17-year-old Muslim boy named Ali Al-Shakti, who migrated to the UK by boat in 2023, was responsible for the stabbing,” the FIR stated.
Additionally, the FIR revealed that the accused had admitted to giving false information to a foreign channel and, during the investigation, he also attempted to blame others.
During the investigation, which was led by the investigating agency’s Additional Director Cybercrime Chaudhry Sarfaraz, it was confirmed that the X account belonged to Asif.
Two laptops along with a mobile phone were also recovered from the accused as part of the investigation, according to the FIR.
