Andrew Tate, centre, and his brother Tristan, leave after appearing at the Court of Appeal, in Bucharest, Romania. Photo / AP
Andrew Tate, centre, and his brother Tristan, leave after appearing at the Court of Appeal, in Bucharest, Romania. Photo / AP
Divisive social media personality and self-described misogynist Andrew Tate has lost his appeal for to end his detention in Romania, the BBC is reporting.
Tate had been waiting today for a Romanian court to rule on his appeal of his 30-day arrest on charges of human trafficking, rape and being part of an organised crime group.
Tate, 36, a British-US citizen who has 4.5 million followers on Twitter, was detained on December 29 for 24 hours along with his brother Tristan, who was charged in the same case. Two Romanian women also were taken into custody.
The BBC says police will continue to hold the group for their 30-day period, after the court rejected the appeal.
All four challenged a judge’s December 30 decision to grant a prosecutors’ request to extend the arrest period to 30 days. A document explaining the judge’s reasoning said “the possibility of them evading investigations cannot be ignored”, and that they could “leave Romania and settle in countries that do not allow extradition”.
Greta Thunberg rowed with Andrew Tate online. Photo / Getty Images/File
Tate and the other three defendants arrived at Bucharest’s Court of Appeal in handcuffs and were taken away in the afternoon. Eugen Vidineac, a Romanian defence lawyer representing Tate, told journalists after a morning hearing that “all four of the accused have made statements” and that “the lawyers’ pleas were listened to entirely”.
“The court has to decide. We hope for a positive solution for our clients,” Vidineac said.
Tate, a former professional kickboxer, is reported to have lived in Romania since 2017, and previously was banned from various prominent social media platforms for expressing misogynistic views and hate speech. The week of his arrest, he traded insults on Twitter with teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg.
Romania’s anti-organised crime agency DIICOT said it had identified six victims in the trafficking case who were subjected to “acts of physical violence and mental coercion” and were sexually exploited by the members of the alleged crime group.
Andrew Tate, third right, and his brother Tristan, second right, are brought by police officers to the Court of Appeal, in Bucharest, Romania, on Tuesday (this morning NZ time). Photo / AP
The agency said victims were lured by pretences of love, and later intimidated, kept under surveillance and subjected to other control tactics while being coerced into performing pornographic acts that were intended to make money for the alleged persecutors.
Prosecutors investigating the case have seized 15 luxury cars, at least seven of which were owned by the Tate brothers, and more than 10 properties or land owned by companies registered to them, DIICOT spokesperson Ramona Bolla said.
Bolla said that if prosecutors can prove the Tates gained money through human trafficking, the assets “will be taken by the state and [will] cover the expenses of the investigation and damages to the victims”.
If the appeals court upholds the arrest warrant extension, prosecutors then could request detentions of up to 180 days for the four people charged. If the court grants the appeal, the defendants could be put under house arrest or banned from leaving Romania.
Since Tate’s arrest, a series of ambiguous posts have appeared on his Twitter account. Each tweet garners widespread media attention.
One, posted Sunday and accompanied by a Romanian report suggesting he or his brother have required medical care since their arrests, read: “The Matrix has attacked me. But they misunderstand, you cannot kill an idea. Hard to Kill.”
Another post, from Saturday, read: “Going to jail when guilty of a crime is the life story of a criminal … going to jail when completely innocent is the story of a hero”.
Hope not Hate, a UK advocacy group, said it monitored Tate for years “because of his close links to the far right”. It described the influencer in a report it produced last year as an “extreme misogynist” who holds conspiratorial views.
“Our major concern is that his brand of extreme and sometimes violent misogyny is reaching a young male audience and that he could serve as a gateway to wider far-right politics,” Hope not Hate said after Tate was banned by Facebook parent company Meta in August. - AP
