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Guatemalan's tweet leads to arrest

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The Associated Press

Published: June 27, 2009

GUATEMALA CITY - Jean Anleu was so fed up with corruption in his country that he decided to vent on the Internet, sending a 96-character message on the social-networking site Twitter.

That message has now earned him a potential five-year prison sentence and the unfortunate distinction of becoming one of the first people in the world to be arrested for a tweet.

Writing under his Internet alias "jeanfer," Anleu urged depositors to pull their money from Guatemala's rural development bank, whose management has been challenged in a political scandal: "First concrete action should be take cash out of Banrural and bankrupt the bank of the corrupt."

These words illegally undermined public trust in Guatemala's banking system, according to prosecutor Genaro Pacheco.

But if the government hoped to silence criticism, it appears to have had the opposite effect. As news of Anleu's arrest spread through the Twitter community, thousands of others started "re-tweeting" his message, bringing Guatemala's government still more unwanted publicity.

About half of his $6,200 bail was donated by Twitterers, who sent money via PayPal from 19 countries.

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