United News of Bangladesh

Influencer brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate, who are charged with human trafficking in Romania, have left for the US after a travel ban on them was lifted, an official said Thursday. The brothers are also charged with forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women. It is not clear under what conditions the Tates — who are keen supporters of US President Donald Trump and boast millions of online followers — were allowed to leave Romania. An official at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case, said the decision was at the discretion of prosecutors. Romania’s anti-organized crime agency, DIICOT, said in a statement Thursday that prosecutors approved a "request to modify the obligation preventing the defendants from leaving Romania,” but that judicial control measures remained in place. The agency did not say who had made the request. “These include the requirement to appear before judicial authorities whenever summoned,” the statement read. “The defendants have been warned that deliberately violating these obligations may result in judicial control being replaced with a stricter deprivation of liberty measure.” Andrew Tate, 38, and Tristan Tate, 36 — who are dual US-British citizens — were arrested near Romania’s capital in late 2022 along with two Romanian women. Romanian prosecutors formally indicted all four last year. In April, the Bucharest Tribunal ruled that a trial could start but did not set a date. All four deny all of the allegations. Romanian court rejects bail request by divisive Andrew Tate The Tates' departure came after Romania’s Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu said this month that a US official under the current Trump administration had expressed interest in the brothers’ legal case in Romania at the Munich Security Conference. The minister insisted it didn’t amount to pressure. In December a court in Bucharest ruled that the case against the Tates and the two Romanian women could not go to trial because of multiple legal and procedural irregularities on the part of the prosecutors. That decision by the Bucharest Court of Appeal was a huge setback for DIICOT, but it did not mean the defendants could walk free. The case has not been closed, and there is also a separate legal case against the brothers in Romania.

A Romanian court on Tuesday rejected a bail request from the divisive social media influencer and former professional kickboxer Andrew Tate who is detained in the country on suspicion of organized crime and human trafficking, an official said. Tate, 36, a British-U.S. citizen who has 5.3 million Twitter followers, was initially detained in late December in Romania’s capital Bucharest, along with his brother Tristan, and two Romanian women. None of the four has yet been formally charged in the case. After a morning hearing Tuesday at the Bucharest Tribunal, a judge rejected Tate’s bail request, said Ramona Bolla, a spokesperson for Romania’s anti-organized crime agency DIICOT. It is not clear what bail conditions were proposed by Tate’s legal team. In Romania, it is rare for defendants under preventative arrest for serious crimes to request posting bail. More common are requests to be placed under other judicial conditions such as house arrest or geographical restrictions. The court’s decision comes after the Tate brothers lost an appeal last month against a judge’s Feb. 21 ruling to extend their arrest for a third time for 30 days. It was the third separate appeal they lost against decisions to extend their detention while investigations continue. A January court document explaining a previous arrest extension noted “the possibility of them evading investigations cannot be ignored,” and said they could “leave Romania and settle in countries that do not allow extradition.” Tate will remain in detention until at least Mar. 29. Before Tuesday's court decision, a post appeared on Andrew Tate’s Twitter account, that read: “If you want a life people will aspire for, you’ll need to be prepared to defend it.” Tate, who has lived 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. The agency said victims were lured with pretenses of love 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 crime group. End/UNB/AP/MB