A court in Brussels is expected to rule today on a complaint by Irish MEP Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan that his Twitter account was hacked by a former parliamentary assistant in 2020.
The Midlands-Northwest MEP claimed offensive comments about naked pictures of the then Green Party candidate Saoirse McHugh were posted from his Twitter account after it was hacked.
The alleged hacking of Mr Flanagan’s Twitter account occurred in September 2020.
The Independent MEP claimed that a message was posted from the account by a third party against his will and knowledge and that it was extremely damaging. The message was subsequently deleted.
Ms McHugh, and Emma Sheering, currently an assistant of Mr Flanagan, were later named in court documents as victims in the case.
It was reported that the offending Tweet contained pictures of Ms McHugh swimming naked.
Mr Flanagan reported the incident, and after an investigation by European Parliament authorities the matter was handed over to Belgian police.
The man accused of the alleged offence is Diarmuid Hayes, an Irish film producer based in Brussels who had worked as an assistant to the MEP in 2018 and 2019.
It is not yet clear if Mr Hayes has entered a plea.
It is understood the case involves two alleged breaches of Belgian law.
One is the fraudulent access of another person’s social media account, the second involves the changing of data on the account.
