Romanian authorities said on Thursday, 29 December, that Andrew Tate – a self-described misogynist and controversial online figure – has been detained in the country on the suspicion of human trafficking, rape, and forming an organised crime group.
The big: Officials from the anti-organised crime unit in Romania raided his properties in Bucharest and detained the former kickboxer, his brother Tristan, and two others for 24 hours. They have been under criminal investigation since April, according to Reuters.
Why is this important? The Romanian officials, according to Reuters, said: "The four suspects ... appear to have created an organised crime group with the purpose of recruiting, housing and exploiting women by forcing them to create pornographic content meant to be seen on specialised websites for a cost. They would have gained important sums of money."
They added they had found six women who had allegedly been sexually exploited by the suspects.
Why you should read on: Thirty-five-year-old British-American Tate, who has been banned from several social media platforms for hate speech and misogynist comments, recently engaged in a Twitter spat with climate activist Greta Thunberg after he boasted about his cars and their emissions.
And then? Thunberg hit back saying that Tate can mail her at smalld***energy@getalife.com. He then released a 2-minute rant video on Twitter, responding to her comment.
But that's hardly anything new. Tate is a serial misogynist, whose videos centred around his core belief that a 'woman is a man's property' garner millions of views.
In 2016, he made headlines when he was removed from the reality show, 'Big Brother', after a video of him violently hitting a woman with a belt and verbally abusing her emerged on social media.
How did social media react? Tate's detention in Romania has triggered some wild reactions on Twitter, with one user even speculating that the former kickboxer's video response to Thunberg on 29 December allowed authorities to confirm that he was in Romania.
While others commented that Tate's detention was 'karma', Indian playback singer and women's rights activist Chinmayi Sripada tweeted, "This man is looked up to as a hero by a many cis-het males across the world and his toxic, misogynistic comments have a fan following."
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