Flanagan says Belgian police are working to establish the identity of “the individual who carried out this malicious act of vandalism on my good name”.
MEP Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan has said that a controversial tweet sent from his Twitter account last weekend was posted from Belgium by an individual who used an old password to log onto his account via a third-party app.
Earlier this week, Flanagan claimed
his account was “compromised” after a tweet reading “Sapirse mchugh photo skinny dipping [sic]" was posted at 2.50 am on Monday morning.
https://twitter.com/lukeming/status/1310565580869640195
The tweet, subsequently deleted, might have been a reference to photos of former Green Party election candidate Saoirse McHugh swimming, which previously appeared in the Guardian newspaper.
In a statement on Friday, Flanagan said that an investigation by Belgian police determined that the tweet in question was posted via a third-party app from Belgium in the early hours of Monday morning, when Flanagan was in Ireland.
https://twitter.com/lukeming/status/1312025757204590592
Flanagan says the individual responsible for posting the unauthorised tweet accessed his account using an old password and that Belgian police are working with him to establish the identity of the individual who he says “carried out this malicious act of vandalism on my good name”.
“The Directorate-General for Security and Safety of the European Parliament (DG SAFE) are assisting me with a police investigation into the unauthorised use of my Twitter account which took place from a location in Belgium,” Flanagan’s statement reads.
“A parliamentary assistant of mine along with an appointed investigator from DG SAFE met with the Belgian Police on Wednesday morning.
“I have now established that my Twitter account had been logged into on a third-party app called Tweetcaster. This app allowed an individual to tweet from my account using an old password. This app was used twice to access my Twitter account from Belgium on 28 September, the same day that an unauthorised tweet was posted and deleted from my account.
“At the time the tweet was posted and then deleted I was in Ireland and have been since March of this year due to Covid-19 restrictions. The police have been provided with the Belgian IP address associated with the use of my account on the Tweetcaster app on that day.
“They are now working with me to establish the exact location and identity of the individual who carried out this malicious act of vandalism on my good name.”
Main image via Facebook/Luke 'Ming' Flanagan MEP
