Romania: Andrew Tate’s detention replaced with house arrest

Andrew Tate, the divisive internet personality who has spent months in a Romanian jail on suspicion of organised crime and human trafficking, has won an appeal to replace his detention with house arrest, an official said on Friday.

The Bucharest Court of Appeal ruled in favour of Tate’s appeal, which challenged a judge’s decision last week to extend his arrest a fourth time for 30 days, said Ramona Bolla, a spokesperson for Romania’s anti-organised crime agency, DIICOT.

Tate, 36, a British-US citizen who has 5.4 million Twitter followers, was initially detained in late December in Romania’s capital Bucharest, 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, the spokesperson said, adding that prosecutors cannot challenge the appeal court’s decision, which was final.

None of the four has yet been formally indicted.

The court ruled in favour of their immediate release.

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

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

Andrew Tate, a former professional kickboxer who has resided in Romania since 2017, was previously banned from various social media platforms for expressing misogynistic views and hate speech.

He has repeatedly claimed Romanian prosecutors have no evidence and alleged their case is a “political” conspiracy designed 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 violence and mental coercion” and sexually exploited by members of the alleged crime group.