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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
Politics
Agencies, Harriet Agerholm

'Rogue Twitter employee' who suspended Donald Trump's account identified

The  " rogu e"  Twitter em ployee  who shut down   Donald Trump 's   account on his last day of work has stepped forward to identify himself. 

Bahtiyar Duysak said silencing the US President on the social network for 11 minutes was a "mistake".

The German national witTurkish heritage added that did not plan to interfere with the account and he was working on a temporary contract for social media company when the incident happened. 

"There are millions of people who would take actions against him if they had the possibility. In my case, it was just random," he told technology website TechCrunch

Towards the end of his last day at the San Francisco-based companan alert came to him that someone had reported Mr Trump's account for an unspecified violation, he said in the interview, which was filmed and posted online. 

He started the process of deactivating the account , although it did not go offline until hours later. He did not explain why there was a delay, something Twitter has not commented on either.  

"I didn't hack anyone. I didn't do anything which I wasn't a uthorised to do," he said.

Twitter has not confirmed whether Mr Duysak was the ex-employee in question, but he has been named in previous reports about the incident. 

The takedown of Mr Trump's account on 2 November sparked concerns among Twitter users over how much power employees have over sensitive accounts and whether abuse of their power could lead to international incidents.

" We hav t aken a nu mber of steps to keep an incident like this from happening again," the company said in a statement earlier this week. 

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