How lies and disinformation about Southport knife attack suspect led to riots

False claims about suspect’s identity were seen by millions of people on social media prior to the unrest

As families mourned the death of three young girls killed in a knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, riots broke out stoked by disinformation about the suspect’s identity.

Hours after police were called to the scene of a mass stabbing, in which eight other children and two adults were also injured, a riot outside a mosque in Southport led to 39 officers being injured in violent clashes, including 27 who needed hospital treatment.

Footage showed crowds of men – at least one identified by antifascists Red Flare as an alleged member of the far-right Patriotic Alternative group – chanting and throwing bricks at riot police, who held shields to protect against incoming projectiles as a police van was set alight and other fires burned nearby.

Protesters set fire to rubbish on the streets in Southport (Getty Images)

The outpouring of rage in the Merseyside town came after disinformation about the attacker’s identity was amplified and seen by millions on social media.

Merseyside Police said on Monday night that a 17-year-old male from Banks in Lancashire, who was born in Cardiff, had been arrested on suspicion of murder.

Despite this – and laws in the UK making it a criminal offence to identify a suspect who is a minor, at least until legal proceedings have completed – false claims began to circulate online purporting to name the suspect as “Ali Al-Shakati” and claiming he had arrived in the UK on a small boat in 2023.

One such source of this disinformation, which also falsely claimed the suspect was known to MI6, was an outlet calling itself Channel3 Now – whose post at 5:51pm on Monday featuring an article on the attack racked up close to two million views on X, formerly Twitter, before being deleted.

According to journalist Katharine Denkinson, who concluded that the post was “racially motivated click-bait”, the website purports to be based in the United States, but has no named journalists and appears to have started out 12 years ago sharing Russian-language videos of men in cars before pivoting to US news five years ago.

An angry mob threw items at police vans and officers outside a mosque (Richard McCarthy/PA Wire)

But false claims about the attacker’s identity were rapidly spread on social media by right-wing accounts with large followings.

According to Marc Owen Jones, a disinformation researcher associate professor at Doha’s Hamid bin Khalifa University, there were at least 27 million impressions on social media posts stating or speculating that the attacker was Muslim, a migrant, refugee or foreigner.

Among the accounts to peddle such claims was influencer Andrew Tate, who claimed the attacker was an “illegal migrant” and urged people to “wake up”, while Darren Grimes of GB News criticised MPs for calling “for more ‘refugees’ to be allowed in” on the same day as the attack.

Meanwhile, English Defence League co-founder Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, shared a post he said suggested authorities were trying to “manipulate” the public over the attacker’s identity.

With many smaller accounts sharing false claims, Prof Jones said: “While people always spread incorrect information in the wake of a tragic event (we saw this with Sydney), there is clear and (sic) attempt to exploit the tragic incident by right wing influencers and grifters – pushing an anti-immigrant and xenophobic agenda despite there being no evidence.”

A police van set alight as trouble flares during a protest in Southport (Richard McCarthy/PA Wire)

The proliferation of false claims saw Merseyside Police a statement issue shortly after midday on Tuesday, saying: “A name has been shared on social media in connection with the suspect in the incident in Southport. This name is incorrect and we would urge people not to speculate on details of the incident while the investigation is ongoing.”

But just hours after a vigil for those killed in Monday’s attack, unrest broke out at around 7:45pm on Tuesday evening as crowds targeted a mosque and attacked it with bricks, with some heard chanting anti-Islam phrases – despite there being no current information on the alleged attacker’s religious beliefs.

Linking the killings to the stabbing of a soldier last week in Kent over the fact that police said both cases were not terror-related, Nigel Farage also posted a video at 5:34pm – seen by 2.5 million people as of Wednesday morning – in which he said: “I just wonder whether the truth is being withheld from us”

“What I do know is something is going horribly wrong in our once beautiful country”, the Reform UK leader said, before posting footage at 10:47pm of “machete fights in Southend tonight” and claiming: “Our country is being destroyed, our values trashed and the public on the point of revolt.”

While the organisation is now widely considered defunct, police said many of those rioting in Southport were “believed to be supporters of the English Defence League”.

Assistant Chief Constable Alex Goss accused individuals who do not live in Merseyside or care about its people for using speculation around the suspect’s identity “to bring violence and disorder to our streets”.

Local MP Patrick Hurley told BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme on Wednesday that the riot was “led by people from outside the town” and condemned “thugs who had got the train in” who were using the “deaths of three little kiddies for their own political purposes”.

Accusing rioters of having “hijacked the grief” of the town and families, the MP said: “These people are utterly disrespecting the families of the dead and injured and totally disrespecting the town.”