Bucharest (Romania): Andrew Tate, the divisive internet personality who has spent months in a Romanian jail on suspicion of organised crime and human trafficking, has won an appeal to replace his detention with house arrest, an official said Friday.
The Bucharest Court of Appeal ruled in favor of Tate’s appeal, which challenged a judge’s decision last week to extend his arrest a fourth time for 30 days, said Ramona Bolla, a spokesperson for Romania’s anti-organized crime agency, DIICOT.
Tate, 36, a British-U.S. Citizen who has 5.4 million Twitter followers, was initially detained in late December in Romania’s capital Bucharest, along with his brother Tristan and two Romanian women.
All four won an appeal Friday, and will remain under house arrest until Apr 29, Bolla said. None of the four has yet been formally indicted.
Tate, a professional kickboxer who has resided in Romania since 2017, was previously banned from various social media platforms for expressing misogynistic views and hate speech. He has repeatedly claimed Romanian prosecutors have no evidence and alleged their case is a “political” conspiracy designed to silence him.
DIICOT said in a statement after the December arrests that it had identified six victims in the human trafficking case who were allegedly subjected to “acts of physical violence and mental coercion” and s*xually exploited by members of the alleged crime group.
The agency said victims were lured with pretenses of love and later intimidated, placed under surveillance and subjected to other control tactics while being coerced into engaging in p*rnographic acts for the financial gain of the crime group.
AP