Assistant accused of seeking to damage reputation of Luke Ming Flanagan with skinny-dipping tweet

Belgian prosecutors have accused a former assistant to MEP Luke “Ming” Flanagan of having intended to damage the politician’s reputation by posting about former Green Party election candidate Saoirse McHugh skinny-dipping on his account, according to charges filed.

Film-maker Diarmuid Hayes appeared in court this week for an initial hearing in a trial over a post that appeared on Mr Flanagan’s account in the early hours of September 28th, 2020, on Twitter, now known as X.

The post read: “Sapirse mchugh photo skinny dipping” [sic]. It led social media observers to believe that someone operating the MEP’s account had intended to search online for photographs of the Co Mayo woman but had accidentally posted the intended search words on Twitter instead.

In a submission of charges seen by The Irish Times, the prosecutors accuse Mr Hayes of two separate crimes, one relating to having accessed the Twitter account and the other to having sent a tweet.

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Mr Hayes is accused of: “With the fraudulent intention of damaging the reputation of Luke Flanagan, Member of the European Parliament, having written or caused to be written a message of a nature that is insulting to Saoirse McHugh, Irish politician, from Luke Flanagan’s Twitter account,” according to the submission.

This constitutes the offence of having introduced data “into a computer system” with “fraudulent intent or intent to cause harm”, under articles 193, 210bis and 213 of Belgium’s penal code, according to the charges laid out by the public prosecutor.

The offence is punishable with imprisonment of six months to five years, and/or a fine of between €26 and €100,000, according to the penal code.

In addition, Mr Hayes is charged with an offence under article 550bis of the Belgian penal code, which relates to accessing a computer system “in the knowledge that he was not authorised to do so” and “with fraudulent intent”.

This charge is punishable with a prison term of between six months and three years, and/or a fine of between €26 and €25,000, according to the penal code.

[ Former Luke Ming Flanagan assistant to go on trial for tweet about Saoirse McHugh ]

It is not uncommon for judges to show leniency depending on the circumstances of a case, such as by replacing prison terms with community service or house arrest with an ankle tag at home.

Mr Hayes has not yet entered a plea in the case and has declined to comment to reporters. A film-maker based in Belgium and originally from Ireland, Mr Hayes worked as an assistant to Mr Flangagan in the European Parliament between 2018 and 2019.

Mr Flanagan has previously said that the tweet was sent from Belgium while he was in Ireland during a time of Covid-19 restrictions and that it was sent using a third-party app called Tweetcaster.

After an initial hearing on Monday at a court in the Palace of Justice in Brussels, Judge Isabelle Jacquemin set January 3rd as a date to hear pleadings.