BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — Divisive social media personality Andrew Tate and his brother, Tristan, have been charged with rape, human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to exploit women, prosecutors in Romania said Tuesday.
Romania’s anti-organized crime agency, DIICOT, said prosecutors filed the charges against the brothers, who are both British-U.S. dual citizens, along with two Romanian women in a court in the capital Bucharest.
In a statement, the agency said the four defendants formed a criminal group in 2021 “in order to commit the crime of human trafficking” in Romania as well as the United States and Britain. It alleged that seven female victims were misled and transported to Romania, where they were sexually exploited and subjected to physical violence by the gang.
One defendant raped an alleged victim twice in March 2022, according to the statement.
The Tate brothers and the two Romanian suspects were detained in late December in Bucharest. The brothers won an appeal on March 31 to be moved from police custody to house arrest.
Tate, 36, is a former professional kickboxer with more than 6 million Twitter followers, many of them young men and schoolchildren. He was previously banned from various social media platforms for expressing misogynistic views and hate speech.
Tate, who has resided in Romania since 2017, has repeatedly claimed Romanian prosecutors have no evidence and alleged their case is a political conspiracy designed to silence him.
Romania’s...
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