{"id":27959,"date":"2024-06-26T08:29:55","date_gmt":"2024-06-26T12:29:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=27959"},"modified":"2024-06-26T08:30:49","modified_gmt":"2024-06-26T12:30:49","slug":"man-arrested-over-westminster-honeytrap-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2024\/06\/26\/man-arrested-over-westminster-honeytrap-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Man arrested over Westminster honeytrap case"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A man has been arrested in connection with the Westminster “honeytrap” scandal.<\/b><\/p>\n

Police arrested a man on suspicion of harassment and offences under the Online Safety Act in London on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Multiple victims were informed by the Metropolitan Police shortly afterwards.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year a string of men, mostly working in politics, revealed that they had received unsolicited, flirtatious WhatsApp messages from people calling themselves “Charlie” or “Abi”. In some cases explicit images were exchanged.<\/p>\n

William Wragg, then an MP, resigned the Conservative whip after saying that he gave the phone numbers of fellow MPs to a man he met on a dating app because he was “scared”.<\/p>\n

Others targeted included the then-Conservative MP for Bosworth, Luke Evans, who said he had contacted the police after becoming “a victim of cyber-flashing and malicious communications”.<\/p>\n

In April the Met announced it was investigating reports of unsolicited messages being sent to MPs and others.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police said: \u201cOn Wednesday, 26 June, police executed a warrant at an address in Islington.<\/p>\n

“A man was arrested on suspicion of harassment and committing offences under the Online Safety Act. He was taken into custody where he remains.<\/p>\n

“The arrest relates to an investigation being carried out by the Met\u2019s Parliamentary Liaison and Investigation Team following reports of unsolicited messages sent to MPs and others.<\/p>\n

The investigation remains ongoing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Police had first been made aware of the messages late in 2023, but news of them began to emerge publicly in April.<\/p>\n

Following initial reports about the messages, Mr Wragg told The Times he had been chatting with someone on an app who subsequently asked him for the numbers of others.<\/p>\n

“They had compromising things on me. They wouldn’t leave me alone… I gave them some numbers, not all of them.”<\/p>\n

He apologised for \u201cmy weakness\u201d which he said had \u201ccaused other people hurt\u201d.<\/p>\n

Subsequently other politicians and political journalists spoke of their own experiences of receiving unwanted messages<\/p>\n

The following week, Luke Evans, then Conservative MP for Bosworth, said he had been a \u201cvictim of cyber-flashing\u201d.<\/p>\n

As many as 20 people in political circles were thought to have received unsolicited messages.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A man has been arrested in connection with the Westminster “honeytrap” scandal. Police arrested a man on suspicion of harassment and offences under the Online Safety Act in London on Wednesday. Multiple victims were informed […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27960,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[511,2848,10465,3064,3067],"class_list":{"0":"post-27959","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-uk","9":"tag-harassment","10":"tag-metropolitan-police","11":"tag-online-safety-act","12":"tag-westminster","13":"tag-whatsapp","14":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27959"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27961,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27959\/revisions\/27961"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}