PROVIDENCE — A Palestinian Brown University student who online sleuths falsely accused of carrying out the Dec. 13 campus shooting says he has been living an “unimaginable nightmare.”
According to a press release from Muslim Advocates, Mustapha Kharbouch became the target of a “disturbing, racist, and hateful campaign to connect him to the tragedy carried out on Brown’s campus.”
“I woke up on Tuesday morning to unfounded, vile, Islamophobic, and anti–Palestinian accusations being directed toward me online,” said Kharbouch. “Instead of grieving with my community in the aftermath of the horrible shooting, I received non-stop death threats and hate speech.”
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Allegations against Kharbouch intensified after his student profile, which included a photo of him wearing a keffiyeh, a traditional Middle Eastern headdress, was removed from Brown’s website.
“This is a standard precautionary measure, to ensure the personal safety of any individual who has been doxxed,” Muslim Advocates wrote.
Doxxing is the act of publicly exposing someone’s private information without their consent, typically with malicious intent.
Rhode Island AG Calls Out Online Sleuths
Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha admonished online sleuths during a press conference Tuesday, stating there are many reasons why a page might be taken down, “particularly if there is chatter out there about words that were spoken,” referring to accusations that the shooter yelled “Allah Akbar” during the attack.
“If that name meant anything to this investigation, we would be out looking for that person, we would let you know we were looking for that person,” Neronha continued. “It’s just a really dangerous road to go down. I know that in today’s age, there are lots of things that people read [into]. It’s just a dangerous thing to do.”
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Kharbouch was never named by police as a suspect in the shooting, although his legal team said he was forced to respond to “inquiries from law enforcement authorities” about where he was when the shooting occurred.
The suspected shooter, who is also accused of fatally shooting MIT professor Nuno Loureiro, has been identified as 48-year-old Claudio Neves Valente, a former Brown University student. Valente was found dead in a storage unit in Salem, N.H., Thursday night, five days after the Brown shooting. An autopsy shows he died Tuesday of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Influencers, Government Officials Fuel False Brown University Shooting Allegations
Activists and influencers with large online followings also attempted to connect the crimes to Kharbouch. Shaun Maguire, a prominent right-wing political activist and venture capitalist, claimed Kharbouch was “very likely” the killer and falsely suggested that Loureiro was Jewish and pro-Israel.
Laura Loomer, a right-wing political activist and Internet personality, claimed the shooter was a “Muslim who shouted ‘Allahu Akbar'” — even after authorities identified the suspect as Valente, a Portuguese national. , Axios reports.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, a senior Justice Department official, shared a post on X about Brown deleting pages referencing Kharbouch and wrote that it was, “Concerning.”
When law enforcement released videos of the suspect, many online accounts cited amateur gait analysis of Kharbouch at a pro-Palestinian protest as supposed evidence that he was the shooter.
