14 DAY TRIAL // Less than two days after RedHack hijacked the email account of the head of Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation, a government controlled company that builds military weapons, Twitter has suspended the account of the hacktivists.
“Redhack main account @TheRedHack was suspended at the request of the fascist Turkish government. Twitter collaborates with those who have no respect for freedom of expression and information,” a RedHack representative told Softpedia.
“This government killed large numbers of people and steal from the people. We have surfaced their crimes, therefore they try to silence us. We are not scared, nor regret our actions. We existed well before Twitter and we will live forever. Because RedHack is the people now,” he added.
The @TheRedHack account has been inaccessible for less than an hour at the time of press. When you try to access it, a prompt appears saying, “Sorry, that user is suspended.”
There’s been no explanation from Twitter’s part so far and we’ve reached out to the company and will update this post when we get back from them.
It is known, however, that Twitter has agreed to censor some accounts and tweets from Turkish users, but those are usually marked accordingly. This time, however, given the sudden disappearance of the account and the missing notice, the RedHack account may have been taken down based on a court order.
In fact, a court order seeking the takedown of the RedHack account was issued last month, but Twitter hasn't acted upon it in the meantime. The delay is interesting considering that Twitter has been known to immediately comply with orders on several occasions a few weeks back.
The hacktivists accuse the government of coordinating work with Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, including through selling weapons, letting others transport them and transforming the country into a “gate to Syria” for radical Islamists.
[Update:] @TheRedHack account has been restored, the hacktivists announced. While Twitter hasn't given us a statement about the incident, RedHack says that the suspension comes as a reaction to content the organization shared on the platform which came from the email account of former Minister of the Interior Muammer Güler.