- George Wright
- BBC news
Andrew Tate was arrested along with his brother Tristan after a raid on his home in the Romanian capital
A Romanian court has granted a police request to hold controversial content creator Andrew Tate in custody for 30 days.
Police arrested Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan in Bucharest as part of an investigation into a case of rape and human trafficking.
Authorities suspect that the two, along with two Romanian men, are linked to an “organized criminal group”.
Andrew Tate has yet to comment directly on these allegations.
Tate got famous when he was kickboxing. And in 2016 he was barred from a popular British TV show over a video clip of him assaulting a woman.
And it gained fame on social media. But Twitter was banned for posting a tweet saying women should “take responsibility” for sexual assaults. His Twitter account was later reactivated.
The two brothers had been under investigation since last April, together with two Romanian citizens.
Videos circulating widely on social media show Tate and his brother being abducted from a luxury mansion.
Romania’s Organized Crime and Terrorism Investigation Department released a statement, without naming the Tate brothers, saying two British and two Romanian nationals were accused of being part of a human trafficking criminal group.
The statement said officers were able to identify six people who had been subjected to “sexual exploitation” by what it described as an “organized criminal group”.
Police said the “victims” were “recruited” by the two Britons.
The statement went on to say that the victims were subsequently coerced into participating in the making of pornographic content under threat of violence.
Tate moved to Romania five years ago.
Rumors circulated online that police were made aware of Tate’s presence in the country after he posted a video attacking environmental activist Greta Thunberg.
In the video he posted, he received a box of pizza from a local restaurant, which some social media users say may have been him who inadvertently disclosed Tate’s whereabouts to police officers.
The feud with Greta Thunberg began earlier this week when Tate tagged the 19-year-old activist in a post bragging about the “huge emissions” of her fleet of cars.
Following his arrest, Thunberg tweeted, “This is what happens when you don’t rotate pizza boxes,” referring to rumors circulating online.
Tate, a British citizen born in the United States, fought as a professional kickboxer and won world titles.
In 2016, he participated in the British reality show ‘Big Brother’ and entered the house for the competition, but was soon expelled after a video circulated showing him beating a woman with a belt.
When fired from the programme, Tate said the video had been edited, calling it “pure lie to make me look bad”.
After this incident, he gained popularity on the internet and social media, but Twitter banned him for his comment about women’s responsibility for their sexual assaults.
Tate was banned from other media such as YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, and was also banned from the TikTok platform, which said “misogyny is a repulsive ideology that cannot be tolerated.”
But Tate’s Twitter account was recently reactivated following Elon Musk’s takeover of the platform.
