Mexican teachers face 30 yrs in jail for 'terror' tweets

AP | Sep 6, 2011, 06.52AM IST
MEXICO CITY: Think before you tweet. A former teacher turned radio commentator and a math tutor sits in a prison in southern Mexico, facing possible 30-year sentence for terrorism and sabotage in what may be the most serious charges ever brought against anyone using a Twitter social network account.

Prosecutors say the defendant's tweet helped cause a chaos of car crashes and panic as parents in the Gulf Coast city of Veracruz rushed to save their children because of false reports that gunmen were attacking schools.

"Here, there were 26 car accidents , or people left their cars in the middle of the streets to run and pick up their children, because they thought these things were occurring at their kids' schools," Gerardo Buganza, interior secretary for Veracruz state said.

Veracruz and the neighbouring suburb of Boca del Rio were already on edge after weeks of gunbattles between drug traffickers.

On August 25, nerves were further frayed when residents saw armed convoys of marines on the streets, making some think a confrontation with gangs was imminent.

That is when Gilberto Martinez Vera, who works as a low-paid tutor at several private schools, allegedly opened the floodgates of fear with repeated messages that gunmen were taking children from schools. "My sister-in-law just called me all upset, they kidnapped five children from the school," Martinez tweeted.

In fact, no such kidnappings occurred that day. Defence lawyer Claribel Guevara said the rumours already had started and that Vera was just relaying what others told him. She said he never claimed to have firsthand knowledge of the incident.

In a subsequent tweet he said, "I don't know what time it happened, but it's true." He also tweeted that three days earlier, "they mowed down six kids in the Hidalgo neighborhood" . While a similar attack occurred, it didn't involve children.