Fake news war over killing of Jamal Khashoggi
ARABIC language website alawatanews.com published a report that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had been forced out of power.
Citing the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA), it said King Salman had signed a decree removing the prince “against the backdrop of growing pressure that accompanies the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi”.
The report was false. The SPA has never published such an article, the wording and picture were lifted from a year-old announcement about the removal of a former crown prince, and MbS, as he is widely known, remains in his position.
The story and the website that published it are part of a fierce information war being waged online over the killing of Khashoggi, a critic of the Saudi government last seen entering Riyadh’s consulate in Istanbul on October 2.
Automated accounts known as bots have flooded social media in recent weeks, many of them promoting messages which support Saudi Arabia, and are intended to cast doubt on allegations that the kingdom was involved in Khashoggi’s death.
But another effort has also sought to muddy the waters more broadly, using fake news websites and associated bots to sow confusion about developments inside the Saudi government.
Alawatanews.com is part of a network of at least 53 websites which, posing as authentic Arabic news outlets, have spread false information about the Saudi government and Khashoggi’s murder.
Investigators at Israeli cybersecurity firm ClearSky said a review of hostserver addresses and registration details showed the websites were operating as part of the same network. Many of them also have near-identical design layouts and web addresses, or have published the same or similar reports.
The alawatanews.com report, which said MbS had been replaced by his brother, was typical of those articles. Another, published by a website called awwtarnews.com said, on October 22, that an MbS aide had also been replaced for the same reason, which was not true.
After being published online, the false news articles were shared on Twitter by automated bot accounts. Twitter suspended the accounts shortly after receiving questions about them from Reuters. Alawatanews.com, awwtarnews.com, the Saudi government and SPA did not respond to requests for comment.
Twitter said it has removed large numbers of accounts for breaching its terms of use over the last two weeks, many of them originating from the Gulf region. INDONESIAN divers yesterday found part of the black box from a Lion Air aircraft that crashed into the Java Sea earlier this week with 189 people on board, officials said.
“It is part of the black box because there is a part missing,” search chief Muhammad Syaugi told reporters. “We don’t know if it’s the voice cockpit recorder or the flight data recorder.”
One device records conversations in the cockpit, the other tracks flight data such as airspeed, pressure altitude and vertical acceleration. Data from the recorders could shed light on the cause of the crash.
Transport Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said the National Transportation Safety Committee would analyse data from the black box and investigation would be “professional and impartial”.
A naval diver who retrieved the device from a depth of 30 metres on the seabed said it was still intact.
Syaugi said navy divers found an object 1.5m long, believed to be a piece of the aircraft.
Military commander Air Chief Marshal Hadi Tjahjanto said late on Wednesday that he believed the aircraft’s fuselage was “not far from the area” where ping signals from the black box were detected.
The Boeing 737 MAX 8 plunged into the sea about 13 minutes after take-off from Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, killing all 181 passengers and eight crew members.
Syaugi said the finding of items, including clothes and in-flight magazines, on the seabed indicated that the fuselage was nearby and that many bodies might still be trapped there.
He said the fuselage would be lifted using a crane once it was found.
Syaugi said 57 bags of human remains had been collected so far, however only one victim has been identified so far, according to police.
The aircraft was bound for Pangkal Pinang in the Bangka-Belitung Islands when it crashed. |