Greta, Andrew Tate and the pizza box: “These are funny speculations” Drugs and public safety: Italy passes law against illegal rave parties

That didn’t quite go to plan: Two days after letting climate activist Greta Thunberg hang out the auto-macho on Twitter, former kickboxing pro Andrew Tate was arrested in Romania on Thursday.

Justice had arrested the suspected human trafficker, rapist and gang criminal because he spread a hate video against Thunberg showing a pizza box with Romanian inscriptions – so the internet suspected. The Romanian prosecutor’s office DIICOT denies this: “These are funny speculations”, but it is not the case that the box played a role in the arrest.

In the video, Tate, in a red boxer jacket and cigar in hand, spoke of Thunberg after “burning” a swanky tweet from Tate. Tate went straight to the climate activist to brag about his gas guzzlers.

“Hi Greta Thunberg. I have 33 cars. My Bugatti has a w16 8.0L quad turbo. My TWO Ferrari 812 competitive have 6.5L v12s. That’s just the beginning. Please give me your email address so I can send you a full list of my car collection and their respective huge emissions,” Tate captioned a photo of him refueling a sports car on Tuesday.

Thunberg counters

The climate activist refuted this by evoking a well-known stereotype about fat sports car owners. “Yes, please enlighten me. Email me at [email protected] ([email protected]),” Thunberg tweeted.

Tate was banned from social media for misogynistic comments and hate speech. So he could not be present on Twitter for years. The ban was lifted by new Twitter boss Elon Musk. After Tate’s arrest, this move was mocked. Ironically, one user wrote that she had to agree with Musk in hindsight because “Andrew Tate’s Twitter reentry was a contribution to the fight against human trafficking”.

Arrested with brother

Tate was arrested together with his brother Tristan, the Romanian prosecutor reports, according to the Reuters news agency. The two have been living in Romania for several years. There was also a raid on the couple’s apartment in Bucharest. The investigations against the two brothers have been ongoing since April.

There are four suspects in total. They are accused of forming a criminal gang for the purpose of “recruiting, harboring and exploiting women by forcing them to produce pornographic content for use on relevant paid websites”. Six women were found who had been exploited by the suspects.

According to a statement from DIICOT, they were recruited using the so-called loverboy method. They were lured with promises of love and marriage. After that, the women and girls were violently and intimidated in different apartments around Bucharest. There they were forced to have sex and appear in pornographic videos, which were then shared on social media. One of the victims was also raped twice by one of those arrested.

Thunberg has now responded dryly to his arrest:

(cpf/sda/apa)