A US judge has demanded Twitter to reveal the identity of the owner of an account at the heart of a conspiracy theory regarding the 2016 murder of Seth Rich, a Democratic Party employee.
Judge Donna Ryu, of the Oakland Federal Court in California, gave Twitter until October 20 to disclose who is behind the @whysprtech account, suspected of being behind a false FBI report used to fuel a conspiracy theory on the death of Seth Rich.
The latter, an employee of the National Committee of the Democratic Party (DNC), was shot dead in July 2016 not far from his home in Washington.
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The perpetrator of the murder has so far not been identified.
The official investigation concluded that an armed robbery had gone wrong, but several sites and media identified as conservative have suggested that it could be a political assassination.
According to this theory, which is not supported by any formal evidence, Seth Rich communicated to Wikileaks, the platform for publishing secret documents, emails internal to the National Committee of the Democratic Party shortly before the 2016 presidential election, before d 'to be discovered and murdered.
The victim's brother, Aaron Rich, is seeking to unmask the owner of the @whysprtech account in defamation proceedings against media outlets that reported the theory, including America First media and
The Washington Times
.
Aaron Rich wants the person behind @whysprtech to be called as a witness in this case.
Twitter has so far refused to disclose @whysprtech's identity, arguing that freedom of speech in the United States also guarantees the right to anonymity, but in her judgment on Tuesday, Judge Ryu ruled him wrong.