Cuba Accuses Twitter of Castro Death Rumours

A Cuba's state-owned website, Cubadebate, has accused Twitter of sparking rumours about Fidel Castro's death through the account of an account holder called "Naroh".

Cubadebate said that Twitter helped spread the disinformation by allowing the hash tag "fidelcastro" to become world's fourth most popular trending topic.

The site also blamed Twitter for censoring subjects in the past that were in favour of the Cuban government.

"Naroh - David Fdez" defines himself on Twitter as a 20-year-old atheist living between Asturias and Madrid. He was one of many users to retweet ironic messages about Castro's death.

Naroh defends himself from the accusations of Cuban government. "They should double-check their "information" before blaming someone for no reason," he tweeted to a CNN reporter. "I wrote about that when the topic was already a trending and my tweets were mostly jokes. I didn't start anything."

He also dismissed the allegations of using an Italian Twitter server as stated by Cubadebate. He then tweeted to his followers, in Spanish: "Cuba is blaming me for killing Fidel Castro on Twitter. Can I now consider myself a Twit-star?"

Cubadebate also accused ant-Castro expatiates living in Florid for fuelling the rumour, saying that "necrophilia counterrevolutionaries, with the support of some media, immediately jumped into the party".

Castro officially retired in 2006, handing power over to his brother Raul during an illness that nearly killed him. He occasionally publishes opinion columns.