On the evening of December 18, 2025 the law enforcement authorities announced the discovery of the lifeless body of the shooter that left two students dead and nine others wounded at Brown University on December 13, 2025, and who had also gunned down an MIT Professor at Brookline, Massachusetts on December 15, 2025. The gunman was identified as Cláudio Manuel Neves-Valente, a 48-year-old former graduate student of Brown University. I was dumbfounded by the news, therefore I searched online for more information about the unusual case.
- I found an article by a digital news source called Channel2 NOW. https://tinyurl.com/49jb5ajc
- The news source's moniker piqued my curiosity, so I delved deeper into the origin of Channel2 NOW, and I found a Contact Us section on its website, and further down the Contact Us page I found it also has a Facebook page.
- In Channel2 NOW's Facebook page it shows that it was created January 31, 2025 by Farhan Asif.
Source: https://www.facebook.com/USnewschannel2/about_profile_transparency (See all)
I found several articles about Farhan Asif, the creator of the Channel2 Now News Facebook page, here you see one article by NBC News and one by Al Jazeera:
Pakistan man is acquitted of spreading misinformation that set off U.K. riots
The decision came less than a week after Farhan Asif, a 32-year-old web developer, was arrested in a raid on his home and charged with cyberterrorism.
Published On 21 Aug 2024
A Pakistani man has appeared in court to face charges of cyber-terrorism after allegedly spreading disinformation on his clickbait website thought to have fuelled anti-immigration riots in the United Kingdom.
Farhan Asif was accused of publishing an article on his Channel3Now website falsely claiming that a Muslim asylum seeker was suspected of a deadly knife attack which killed three girls – aged six, seven and nine – at a Taylor Swift-themed dance and yoga session for children in Southport.
UK authorities have blamed online misinformation for setting off days of riots that targeted mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers, as well as police officers and other properties.
“He is a 31-year-old software engineer with no journalism credentials, apart from running the Channel3Now website, which served as a source of income for him,” a senior official at Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency told the AFP news agency on condition of anonymity.
“Initial investigations indicate that his sole intent was to make money through clickbait content.”
Asif appeared at a Lahore district court on Wednesday and was charged with cyber-terrorism. He was remanded to custody for one day, the official added.
The article with the false information was published on Channel3Now hours after the attack and was widely cited in viral social media posts.
Misinformation campaigns
More than a dozen English towns and cities saw unrest and riots after the July 29 knife attack, with officials blaming far-right elements for helping to stir up the disorder.
The man charged with murder and attempted murder over the stabbing spree, Axel Rudakubana, was born in the UK to parents who hail from Rwanda, an overwhelmingly Christian country.
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False claims about the suspect’s origins named the suspect as “Ali al-Shakati” with no official source for the name.
Marc Owen Jones, associate professor of Middle Eastern studies at Doha’s Hamad bin Khalifa University, said on X that only a day after the stabbing, he had tracked “at least 27 million impressions [on social media] for posts stating or speculating that the attacker was Muslim, a migrant, refugee or foreigner”.
There were also false claims that the suspect had arrived in the UK on a small boat in 2023 with influencer Andrew Tate claiming in a video on X that an “undocumented migrant” who had “arrived on a boat” had attacked the girls in Southport.
Farhan Asif, second right, being escorted to court in Lahore, Pakistan, on Monday. K.M. Chaudary / AP
Aug. 26, 2024, 11:24 PM EDT / Source: The Associated Press
By The Associated Press
LAHORE, Pakistan — A judge in Pakistan on Monday acquitted a man who was charged with spreading misinformation that helped set off widespread rioting in the U.K. earlier this month, officials said.
The decision came less than a week after Farhan Asif, a 32-year-old web developer, was arrested in a raid on his home in Lahore, the capital of eastern Punjab province, and charged with cyberterrorism.
After a hearing Monday, the judge ordered the release of Asif, who walked free. He told the judge that he deleted his post on social media only six hours after realizing that it was not correct.
Far-right anti-immigrant riots break out across the U.K.
Federal investigators told the judge that they had no evidence to prove that he was guilty of intentionally spreading misinformation, Rana Rizwan, a defense lawyer, told reporters.
The Federal Investigation Agency had accused Asif of spreading misinformation on Farhan Asif about the British teenage suspect in a stabbing attack that killed three girls and injured 10 other people on July 29 at a dance class in northwest England.
Pakistani man faces cyber-terror charge over false posts linked to UK riots
The man is accused of claiming that a Muslim asylum seeker was suspected of a knife attack that killed three girls.
Aug. 26, 2024, 11:24 PM EDT / Source: The Associated Press
By The Associated Press
LAHORE, Pakistan — A judge in Pakistan on Monday acquitted a man who was charged with spreading misinformation that helped set off widespread rioting in the U.K. earlier this month, officials said.
The decision came less than a week after Farhan Asif, a 32-year-old web developer, was arrested in a raid on his home in Lahore, the capital of eastern Punjab province, and charged with cyberterrorism.
After a hearing Monday, the judge ordered the release of Asif, who walked free. He told the judge that he deleted his post on social media only six hours after realizing that it was not correct.
Far-right anti-immigrant riots break out across the U.K.
Federal investigators told the judge that they had no evidence to prove that he was guilty of intentionally spreading misinformation, Rana Rizwan, a defense lawyer, told reporters.
The Federal Investigation Agency had accused Asif of spreading misinformation on Farhan Asif about the British teenage suspect in a stabbing attack that killed three girls and injured 10 other people on July 29 at a dance class in northwest England.
The man is accused of claiming that a Muslim asylum seeker was suspected of a knife attack that killed three girls.
A police officer searches a masked person in Walthamstow, east London, UK, August 7, 2024 [Andy Rain/EPA-EFE]
Published On 21 Aug 2024
A Pakistani man has appeared in court to face charges of cyber-terrorism after allegedly spreading disinformation on his clickbait website thought to have fuelled anti-immigration riots in the United Kingdom.
Farhan Asif was accused of publishing an article on his Channel3Now website falsely claiming that a Muslim asylum seeker was suspected of a deadly knife attack which killed three girls – aged six, seven and nine – at a Taylor Swift-themed dance and yoga session for children in Southport.
UK authorities have blamed online misinformation for setting off days of riots that targeted mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers, as well as police officers and other properties.
“He is a 31-year-old software engineer with no journalism credentials, apart from running the Channel3Now website, which served as a source of income for him,” a senior official at Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency told the AFP news agency on condition of anonymity.
“Initial investigations indicate that his sole intent was to make money through clickbait content.”
Asif appeared at a Lahore district court on Wednesday and was charged with cyber-terrorism. He was remanded to custody for one day, the official added.
The article with the false information was published on Channel3Now hours after the attack and was widely cited in viral social media posts.
Misinformation campaigns
More than a dozen English towns and cities saw unrest and riots after the July 29 knife attack, with officials blaming far-right elements for helping to stir up the disorder.
The man charged with murder and attempted murder over the stabbing spree, Axel Rudakubana, was born in the UK to parents who hail from Rwanda, an overwhelmingly Christian country.
Get instant alerts and updates based on your interests. Be the first to know when big stories happen.
Yes, keep me updated
False claims about the suspect’s origins named the suspect as “Ali al-Shakati” with no official source for the name.
Marc Owen Jones, associate professor of Middle Eastern studies at Doha’s Hamad bin Khalifa University, said on X that only a day after the stabbing, he had tracked “at least 27 million impressions [on social media] for posts stating or speculating that the attacker was Muslim, a migrant, refugee or foreigner”.
There were also false claims that the suspect had arrived in the UK on a small boat in 2023 with influencer Andrew Tate claiming in a video on X that an “undocumented migrant” who had “arrived on a boat” had attacked the girls in Southport.
From the above NBC and Al Jazeera articles we can understand that Farhan Asif is a Pakistani software engineer/web developer (with no journalism credentials), that was accused of cyberterrorism in Lahore, Pakistan for publishing misinformation in an article on his Channel3Now website, and on Youtube and Facebook that may have provoked anti-immigration riots in the UK in the Summer of 2024.
Pakistan man faces cyber-terror charge over false posts linked to UK riots
1Aug 22, 2024
Farhan Asif, an ordinary man with a not-so-ordinary job, found himself at the center of an international storm. On a seemingly ordinary Tuesday, his life took a dramatic turn when local police, part of the cybercrime wing of the Federal Investigation Agency, knocked on his door. The usually peaceful atmosphere of his home was shattered as officers moved in, seizing two laptops and a mobile phone. Farhan was taken into custody, accused of something far more serious than his neighbors could have imagined—cyberterrorism.
The story begins far from Lahore, in the quiet town of Southport in Britain, where tragedy struck just last month. The town was rocked by a horrific stabbing attack at a local dance class, where three young girls lost their lives. The community, already reeling from the shock, found itself caught in a web of lies when the suspect in the crime was falsely identified online as a Muslim asylum seeker. This misinformation spread like wildfire, igniting days of violent, racist, and anti-immigrant riots across Britain.
But how did the flames of unrest in Britain find their spark in Pakistan? The answer lies in a small news aggregation website called Channel3Now, where Farhan Asif worked. The site, which at first glance appeared to be a local American television news station, was anything but. It specialized in clickbait—sensational news articles that often blurred the line between fact and fiction. And it was one such article that set off the chain of events leading to Farhan’s arrest.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cczG2Us5C5U
So, it seems as if Farhan Asif, the person who was accused of cyberterrorism in Pakistanin 2024 through his Channel3Now posts. Farhan Asif is also be the creator of the questionable news source Channel2 NOW, as it is displayed on his Channel2 NOW Facebook page.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Channel3Now
Type of site News aggregator; fake news website
Headquarters Lahore, Pakistan
Launched 2023; 2 years ago
Current status Offline
Channel3Now (also stylised as Channel3 NOW) was a website based in Pakistan which aggregated crime news while presenting itself as an American-style TV channel.[1][2] Launched in 2023,[3] the website was shut down in August 2024 after sharing fake news which fuelled riots in the United Kingdom.[1] On August 20, 2024, a person linked to the website was arrested in Pakistan on charges of cyberterrorism;[4] the case was later dropped.
History
Channel3Now was registered as a website with a domain server located in Ireland on 15 June 2023.[5] According to Voice of America, the earliest archived versions of the Channel3Now site date back to September 2023.[6] An OSINT investigation by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue indicated that an earlier version of the website was hosted at an address in Pakistan.[7][5]
The website was previously known as Fox3 Now, Fox5 Now and Fox7 Now, leading to a legal dispute with the unrelated Fox Media LLC.[6] In August 2023, an arbitration ruling ordered the website to transfer those domains to Fox Media LLC.[6]
In July 2024, following the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, Channel3Now posted a video on its Rumble account falsely claiming that the perpetrator had been identified as a Chinese man. It also posted baseless claims on X/Twitter about the criminal history of Thomas Matthew Crooks, a white man who was later identified as the suspect and confirmed to have no criminal history.[5]
Riots, arrest and shutdown
On 29 July 2024, Channel3Now posted a false article claiming that the 17-year-old charged in the Southport stabbing was a Muslim asylum seeker who had arrived in the UK by boat a year earlier. It also claimed he was under surveillance by MI6.[5][2] The article was widely quoted in viral posts on social media.
On 31 July 2024, the website issued an apology, blaming its "misleading information" on the riots on a now-dismissed team of employees.[8][9] Its YouTube channel and associated Facebook pages were suspended.[10]
On 14 August 2024, an investigation by ITV News at Ten identified a person from Lahore, Pakistan as working for Channel3Now. The individual denied being responsible for the article, claimed he was merely a freelancer, and said three or four people were fired for publishing the false information. Channel3Now's website was shut down later that day.[1]
On 20 August 2024, the same person was arrested by Pakistani police for spreading false information.[11] The case was dropped six days later after police said they were unable to find evidence that the accused was the originator of the fake news article.[12]
Speculation on Russian ties
In the aftermath of the riots, British media speculated that Channel3Now might be linked to Russian disinformation efforts,[10] with a former head of MI6 endorsing the theory in an interview with The Telegraph.[3] However, a BBC News investigation on 8 August 2024 found no evidence to back up the claim.[2]
One source of this theory had been the presence of Russian-language content in the history of its YouTube channel. According to Channel3Now, it had purchased a former Russian-language YouTube channel and changed its name, initially posting video content related to Pakistan.[2]
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel3Now
Furthermore, what corroborates my conclusion is the overwhelming evidence and the similar M.O. of Channel2 NOW and the defunct Channel3Now; They are both apparently the creation of Farhan Asif.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/@NewsChannel2NOW (More Info)
What do Channel2 NOW and Channel3Now have in common? Farhan Asif.
So, at the end of the day (I hate this cliché), Channel2 NOW's 'Brown University Shooting Suspect Identified as 48-year-old Cláudio Manuel Neves-Valente' article took me down a complex rabbit-hole that led me to Farhan Asif, a questionable character providing news articles on what pretends to be an American TV news channel, which is far from the truth...
Arsenio.
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