Who Is Mustapha Kharbouch? Brown University Faces Heat For ‘Scrubbing’ His Profile Amid Manhunt

Last Updated:December 17, 2025, 09:27 IST

The name of Mustapha Kharbouch, a first-year student and a Palestinian refugee born in Lebanon, surfaced after Brown University was accused of deleting his online student profile.

Mustapha Kharbouch (L) is a first-year student whose name surfaced in connection with the December 13 shooting after his student profile on the Brown University profile was deleted. (Photo: X)

As the manhunt for the suspect responsible for the December 13 shooting at Brown University continues, speculation has grown over the involvement of a first-year Palestinian refugee student after the university was accused of deleting his profile on its website.

Authorities have asked members of the public for help identifying the suspected gunman who killed two Brown University students and injured nine others in a classroom on December 13, as the manhunt stretched past 72 hours and residents remained on edge. Officials in Providence, Rhode Island, said they still have not identified the attacker.

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Kash Patel on Tuesday shared a video timeline which documented the movements of the “person of interest” (PoI) in the Brown University shooting. In all of the videos made public, the suspect’s face was masked or turned away, and authorities have only been able to give a vague description of him as being stocky and about 5 feet, 8 inches (173 cm) tall.

General Who Is Mustapha Kharbouch?

As the manhunt entered the fourth day, attention on social media has increasingly focused on Mustapha Kharbouch, with users speculating about his rumoured involvement in the shooting, even though authorities have not named any suspect or PoI publicly.

Kharbouch’s name has surfaced solely on speculation after his student profile was deleted from the website of Brown University. CNN-News18 has not independently verified this claim and officials have not provided any connection between Kharbouch and the shooting.

Social media users noticed that Brown University had removed the online student profile of Mustapha Kharbouch, who was identified as a first-year student studying International Affairs and Anthropology with a focus on the Middle East. Kharbouch was described as a third-generation Palestinian refugee born and raised in Lebanon.

He reportedly attained a scholarship to attend United World College (UWC) Maastricht and had led and continued to help with community-building initiatives and social change roles, as per the deleted profile. Several posts on X alleged that Brown University was “scrubbing” references to the student and questioned whether social media accounts linked to him had been removed at the request of authorities.

“Why has Brown University suddenly erased every mention of Mustapha Kharbouch (a Palestinian activist and first-year student) from its official website, right as the FBI intensifies its manhunt for the shooter who killed two and injured nine in the campus attack?” a user wrote. Another user alleged that Kharbouch had fled the university and was missing.

MAGA leader Laura Loomer said she found a page on a YouTube account that belongs to a man named Mustapha Kharbouch, which was filled with Islamic videos that taught how to build electronic devices at home with wires. “Why won’t police say what the shooter yelled before he opened fire? ALLAHU AKBAR is what witnesses heard. Why is Brown deleting this Palestinian from their website? Is he a suspect?” she said.

General Brown University Replies

After massive outrage on social media, Brown University issued a statement, saying it has seen “harmful doxxing activity directed toward at least one member of the Brown University community.”

“It’s important to make clear that targeting individuals could do irrevocable harm. Accusations, speculation and conspiracies we’re seeing on social media and in some news reports are irresponsible, harmful, and in some cases dangerous for the safety of individuals in our community,” it added.

The University further said, “It is not unusual as a safety measure to take steps to protect an individual’s safety when this kind of activity happens, including in regard to their online presence. As law enforcement officials stated clearly on Tuesday afternoon, if this individual’s name had any relevance to the current investigation, they would be actively looking for this individual and providing information publicly.”

Meanwhile, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said there could be “lots of reasons” as to why a page may be taken down and randomly identifying someone based on it is a “dangerous road to go down”, CNN reported.

“It’s easy to jump from someone saying words that were spoken to what those words are to a particular name that reflects a motive targeting a particular person,” he said. “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.”

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