Anti-corruption twitterer lands in jail

A COMPUTER user in Guatemala has become one of the first in the world to be arrested for twittering.

Jean Anleu was so tired with corruption in his country that he decided to vent his feeling with a 96-character message on the social networking site.

The message, or tweet, has now earned him a potential five-year prison sentence.

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. Authorities proved that Anleu sent the message by searching his Guatemala City home, and then put him in prison with kidnappers, extortionists and other dangerous criminals for a day and a half before letting him out on bail.