Disinformation spreader that fueled violence in the UK allegedly has Russian traces

Stephen McPartland, a former British minister of state for security, believes that Russia may be responsible for a disinformation campaign on social media that fueled anger that caused riots last Tuesday night in Southport.

During a children’s vigil at the beach resort, a 17-year-old attacked several kids, sparking a riot. The attacker murdered three little girls and left five children and two adults in serious condition.

An obscure news website, Channel 3 Now, has named the suspect as Ali Al-Shakati, claiming that he was a Muslim asylum seeker. Russian state media and their various international affiliates picked up on the claim, as did far-right influencers Tommy Robinson (founder of the anti-immigrant English Defence League) and notorious Andrew Tate. 

The reposts of the information about Ali Al-Shakati attracted tens of thousands of likes and millions of views.

• Quote: “EDITOR’S NOTE: Due to an editing error, this article originally stated that an outlet claiming to be based in the US, called Channel3 Now, had identified the suspect as Ali-Al-Shakati, an asylum-seeker who allegedly arrived in the UK by boat last year. He was reportedly “on the MI6 watch list and known to Liverpool mental health services.” Channel3 Now… later deleted the claim.”
• Link: https://www.rt.com/news/601805-southport-uk-stabbing-children/

• Quote: “Channel 3 named the suspect as Ali-Al-Shakati, an asylum-seeker who arrived in the UK by boat last year. He was reportedly “on the MI6 watch list and known to Liverpool mental health services.””
• Link:https://www.bignewsnetwork.com/news/274474542/children-dead-in-horrendous-uk-stabbing-attack

• Quote: “@ijones: https://x.com/channel3nownews/status/1817966236929769599” (the original channel3nownews tweet is deleted)
• Link: https://wykop.pl/ludzie/mynameis60

• Quote: “Canal 3 nomeado o suspeito como Ali-Al-Shakati, um requerente de asilo que chegou ao Reino Unido de barco no ano passado. Ele teria sido “na lista de observação do MI6 e conhecido pelos serviços de saúde mental de Liverpool.””
• Link:https://jornaltxopela.com/2024/07/29/criancas-morrem-em-horrivel-ataque-a-faca-no-reino-unido/

• Quote: “17-year-old Ali Al-Shakati from Banks has been arrested in connection with the Southport stabbings and is currently in police custody. Ali-Al-Shakati, was on the MI6 watch list and known to Liverpool mental health services.”
• Link: https://texaschlforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=103056

As news of the alleged attacker’s identity went viral, anger grew, resulting in the riots that engulfed the town of Merseyside and spread throughout the country.

Later, the police had to confirm that the suspect’s supposed name was incorrect. On Thursday, the court named the real suspect as Axel Rudakubana, who was born in Cardiff to Rwandan parents in 2006.

Stephen Hutchings, a Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Manchester and the principal investigator of an anti-disinformation project, says that it is very, very messy and uncertain how such a poorly known website found itself at the center of the chain of events.

In 2012, the Channel3 Now YouTube channel posted its first videos with Russian titles and generic thumbnails. They showed people racing their cars in Russian Izhevsk. The channel went dark for several years, likely due to its owners becoming bored with it. Suddenly, it resumed its activity and changed its name to Funny Hours. After its reboot, it started posting English-language videos about Pakistan instead of its original car-fan content.

However, the outlet rebranded as Channel3 Now a couple of years ago, and the videos it shared started to resemble those of a professional news channel. The channel3now.com web domain was registered last year.

Even though the X account that shared Channel 3Now’s articles only has 3,000 followers, disinformation expert Dr. Marc Owen Jones, a professor at Northwestern University’s Doha campus, claims that posts on the same platform “speculating that the [Southport] attacker was Muslim, a migrant, refugee, or foreigner” generated at least 27 million impressions.

Then Channel 3’s YouTube channel mysteriously disappeared from the internet after the Southport attacker’s supposed identity was disproven.

Meanwhile, the obscure news website released a statement apologizing for its “misleading information,” which “did not meet our standards of reliability and integrity.”. 

The situation clearly shows that misinformation does not need to be convincing in order to start a fire.