Andrew Tate’s detention replaced by house arrest : NPR

Young fans and media surround Andrew Tate as he leaves a police detention center in Bucharest, Romania, following his release from prison on Friday.

Alexandru Dobre/AP

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Young fans and media surround Andrew Tate as he leaves a police detention center in Bucharest, Romania, following his release from prison on Friday.

Alexandru Dobre/AP

BUCHAREST, Romania — Andrew Tate, the controversial internet personality who spent months in a Romanian prison on suspicion of organized crime and human trafficking, has won an appeal to replace his detention with house arrest, said a manager on Friday.

The Bucharest Court of Appeal ruled in favor of the appeal of Tate, who challenged a judge’s decision last week to extend his arrest for a fourth time by 30 days, said Ramona Bolla, spokesperson for the Romanian agency for the fight against organized crime, DIICOT.

Tate, 36, a British-American citizen who has 5.5 million Twitter followers, was initially arrested in late December in Bucharest, the Romanian capital, along with his brother Tristan and two Romanian women.

All four won an appeal on Friday and will remain under house arrest until April 29, Bolla said. None of the four has yet been formally charged. The court ruled in favor of their immediate release. Prosecutors cannot challenge the appeals court’s decision, which was final, Bolla added.

As the brothers left the detention center on Friday evening in Bucharest, Tristan Tate told a scrum of reporters that “the judges made the right decision today.”

“I respect what they did for me and they will be justified in their decision because I am an innocent man and I can’t wait to prove it,” he said.

Some Tate supporters outside the establishment chanted “Top-G, Top-G”, using a popular nickname that many Andrew Tate fans call him.

Later, standing outside what is believed to be the Tate brothers’ home near the capital, Andrew Tate said he wanted to thank the judges “who heard us today because they were very attentive and they listened to us, and they let us free.”

“I have no resentment in my heart for the country of Romania or anyone else,” he said. “I just believe in the truth…I truly believe that justice will be served in the end. There’s no way I’m going to be convicted for something I didn’t do.”

Andrew Tate, left, and his brother Tristan leave a police detention center in Bucharest, Romania, after his release from prison on Friday.

Alexandru Dobre/AP

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Alexandru Dobre/AP

Andrew Tate, left, and his brother Tristan leave a police detention center in Bucharest, Romania, after his release from prison on Friday.

Alexandru Dobre/AP

Tate, a professional kickboxer who has resided in Romania since 2017, has previously been banned from various social media platforms for expressing misogynistic views and hate speech. He repeatedly claimed that Romanian prosecutors had no evidence and alleged that their case was a “political” plot 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 abuse and mental coercion” and sexually exploited by members of the alleged criminal group.

The agency said the victims were lured into lovemaking and later intimidated, placed under surveillance and subjected to other control tactics while being coerced into engaging in pornographic acts for the financial gain of the criminal group.

In January, Romanian authorities descended on a compound near Bucharest linked to the Tate brothers and towed away a fleet of luxury cars including a Rolls-Royce, a Ferrari and a Porsche. They said they seized assets worth an estimated $3.9 million.

Prosecutors said that if they could prove that the owners of the cars had made money through illicit activities such as human trafficking, the assets would be used to cover the expenses of the investigation and to compensate the victims. victims. Tate unsuccessfully appealed the seizure of assets.