Inside shady fake news website accused of fuelling riots by falsely claiming Southport suspect was an asylum seeker

A Pakistani father, an amateur Canadian hockey player and a man named Kevin from Texas have been identified as some of the figures involved in a shadowy fake news website that fuelled lies about the Southport stabbings. There is no suggestion he had anything to do with the Southport story FAKE NEWS: A screengrab of the story as it was originally posted on the Channel3now site An investigation looking into the origins of Channel3Now by BBC disinformation and social media correspondent Marianna Spring identified two of its contributors as an amateur hockey player called James - who lives in Nova Scotia in Canada - and Farhan, a father from Lahore, Pakistan. FAKE NEWS: A social media post about the fake news story on July 29 received millions of views and was widely shared on X by far-right influencers Channel3Now issued a 'sincere apology' for the story and blamed its 'UK-based team'. The fake news site claimed it had 'fired' those responsible A police van was set on fire near a mosque in Southport on Tuesday evening as riots broke out Trouble flares during a protest in Southport, after three children died and eight were injured in a knife attack Channel3 Now was inactive for six years before it suddenly began posting bizarre videos in English in 2019, including one about a tiger being beaten to death and a match report on the Manchester City women's football team. British businesswoman Bernadette Spofforth has been accused of being the first person to post false information that the Southport stabbings suspect was an asylum seeker who had arrived in Britain by boat Ms Spofforth posted on X the wrong name of the boy accused of carrying out the attacks just hours after three girls were murdered at a Taylor Swift dance workshop last Monday MailOnline was able to establish her identify after conducting an extensive trawl of X posts featuring the name Ali Al-Shakti which showed that hers was the first.