Mexican Twitter 'terrorist' duo are released without charge

TWO MEXICANS who faced up to 30 years in prison for Twitter 'terrorism' have been freed, marking an end to one of the micro-blogging web site's biggest legal issues to date.

The man and woman were arrested after falsely tweeting about a gunman massacre at local schools, which sent parents into a frenzy and resulted in a number of car crashes as people raced to save their children, who turned out to be in no danger at all.

Maths tutor Gilberto Martinez Vera and radio commentator Maria de Jesus Bravo Pagola made the erroneous tweets allegedly on the basis of rumours they received about attacks in the violence-stricken city of Veracruz, reports that worried parents were all too willing to believe.

The duo were locked up for over three weeks as the case against them suggested that they might be jailed for as much as 30 years, despite outcries from members of the public that imprisonment was unjustified.

Harsh Mexican law would have likely seen the two jailed, but lawmakers in Veracruz adjusted the law under pressure to allow for the application of significantly lighter sentences.

However, further public outcry resulted in the charges being ultimately dropped altogether. "The government was shamed into setting them free," said Fidel Ordonez, the lawyer for the two individuals, according to Reuters.

Twitter has become a hotspot for legal issues over recent months, with joke tweets being seen by authorities as potentially real threats. This incident, however, was probably the most extreme example of how a seemingly innocuous message of less than 140 characters could result in an insane prison sentence.

Luckily for the duo involved it did not come to that, and in fact, the incident has resulted in changes to Mexican law, which might help avoid similar threatened sentences in future. µ