New Delhi: Twitter deleted a controversial tweet by former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad glorifying the violence that struck France on Thursday.
The social networking site said that the tweet violated its rules. The tweet had sparked strong condemnation on Twitter, where several users called out the former Malaysian PM, ANI reported.
Twitter had earlier added a disclaimer to the tweet stating that the post violated its rules but kept it because of public interest. However, later the tweet was removed while keeping the rest of the Twitter thread intact.
Cedric O, France’s Secretary for Digital Sector, slamming the tweet, called for the suspension of the Twitter account of the former Malaysian prime minister.
“I just spoke with the Managing Director of Twitter France. The account of former Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamad must be immediately suspended. If not, Twitter would be an accomplice to a formal call for murder,” Cedric O tweeted.
Mohamad’s thread of 13 tweets comes in the wake of French President Emmanuel Macron’s criticism of radical Islam following the beheading of a school teacher by an 18-year-old for showing cartoons of Prophet Mohammed in class.
Mohamad in his tweets had criticised the French President for not being “civilised” and for being “very primitive in blaming the religion of Islam and Muslims for the killing of the school teacher”.
In another in France on Thursday, a knife-wielding man decapitated a woman and killed two people at the Notre-Dame Basilica in Nice, while also injuring several others.