13 June,2011 11:41 AM IST | | ANI
The true identity of a Syrian blogger of ''A Gay Girl in Damascus'' fame has been revealed as a 40-year-old American man
Tom MacMaster, a student at the University of Edinburgh, wrote an apology on the blog confessing that the entire thing was a hoax, The Washington Post reports.
"While the narrative voice may have been fictional, the facts on this blog are true and not misleading as to the situation on the ground. I do not believe that I have harmed anyone ufffd I feel that I have created an important voice for issues that I feel strongly about," he wrote.
MacMaster wrote blogs under the name Amina Arraf and drew attention with his passionate writings about the Syrian government's crackdown on Arab Spring protesters.
Those writings stopped last Tuesday, and a posting to the blog, written by a cousin, said she had been hauled away by government security agents.
Two days after her disappearance, images presented on the blog as being of Amina were revealed to have been taken from the Facebook page of a British woman.
The hoax has raised questions about the reliance on blogs, Tweets, Facebook postings and other Internet communications, as they increasingly become a standard way to report on global events.
