In wanting to provoke Greta Thunberg, ex-sportsman Andrew Tate, known for his violence and hate speech, finally posted a video that seems to have helped the Romanian authorities arrest her.
In 2022, a tweet can change the course of things. Former kickboxing champion and masculinist Andrew Tate, known for his hate speech and violence against women, was arrested in Romania on December 28 for human trafficking. This concluded a sequence that only lasted 24 hours on Twitter. It all started when he arrested the famous environmental activist Greta Thunberg for the umpteenth time on December 27.
In this original tweet, he boasts of having 33 cars with very polluting engines. He then asserts that ” it’s only the beginningt” and adds, addressing Greta Thunberg: “ Please send me your email address so that I can send the complete list of my collection of cars and the huge emissions of each of them. »
Greta Thunberg’s response was quick and scathing. ” Yes, please do enlighten me. email me at [email protected] “, she writes in her own tweet. In French, it goes something like: Yes, please enlighten me. Send me an email at[email protected] “. In short: Greta Thunberg openly mocks Andrew Tate and his futile obsessions. His tweet very quickly reached 2 million “likes” – more than 3 million to date –, undoubtedly outclassing that of Andrew Tate.
Andrew Tate arrested in Romania for human trafficking
Touched by the repartee of the young woman and determined to have the last word, the former kickboxing champion revived Greta Thunberg, in a new tweet, in the form of a video. He appears there in a bathrobe, a cigar in his hand. In this one, he attacks the environmental activist, as usual. A detail of the video, however, will change everything: there are pizza boxes. Their brand confirms its presence in Romania and the video seems to have allowed authorities to locate Andrew Tate more precisely. Barely a few hours later, a police raid led to his arrest at his residence in Bucharest, from where he left handcuffed.
The reason ? Andrew Tate is not just a troll. He is under investigation for human trafficking and gang rape. More specifically, he is said to be behind the recruitment and exploitation of women for the forced creation of pornographic content — using physical violence and psychological pressure. An arrest warrant has been issued against him for this charge several months ago (and against his brother as well as several other people).
This extraordinary case indirectly showed the power Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). A seemingly mundane photo or video can actually be a gold mine of information. The media content, but also the metadata (such as theEXIF for a photograph), give very valuable indications. We see it widely in Ukraine, by the way.
This isn’t the first time Andrew Tate has made the news for violent and criminally punishable behavior. In 2016, he was banned from British reality TV Big Brother after hitting a woman. A few years later, he said on Twitter that women ” bore the responsibility in case of sexual assault. This tweet earned him banishment from the platform at the time, but, on the decision of Elon Musk, who became the boss of Twitter, he had been back since last November. (He remains banned from YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook, however.)
In one last tweet published on November 30, Greta Thunberg puts an end to the exchange by declaring with irony: ” here’s what happens when you don’t recycle your pizza boxes. »
