Twitter has announced that US President Donald Trump has been banned from the platform with immediate effect.
Since losing the presidential election to Joe Biden in November, Trump has steadfastly refused to accept the result - alleging widespread electoral fraud in several key States where he lost without providing any material evidence.
On Wednesday, the day that Congress was due to count the votes that certified Biden's win, Trump addressed a large rally of his supporters near the Capitol Building reaffirming his allegations that the election had been stolen from them.
Shortly afterwards hundreds of protestors stormed the building and as a result, five people were left dead - including a police officer.
On the night of the horrendous scenes, Trump released a short video via Twitter telling his supporters that he 'loved' them and repeated his claims that the election had been rigged by "evil" people.
Twitter removed that video and gave Trump an initial 12-hour suspension but has now decided to make his ban permanent.
In a statement, the company said: "After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them - specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter - we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.
"In the context of horrific events this week, we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter Rules would potentially result in this very course of action. Our public interest framework exists to enable the public to hear from elected officials and world leaders directly. It is built on a principle that the people have a right to hold power to account in the open.
"However, we made it clear going back years that these accounts are not above our rules entirely and cannot use Twitter to incite violence, among other things. We will continue to be transparent around our policies and their enforcement."
Trump's behaviour on the social networking site over the last four years of his presidency has often provoked controversy and now the company is being criticised in some quarters for only taking decisive action now that his time in office is effectively over.
Following his ban, Trump seemingly posted a series of messages from the official @POTUS Twitter account criticising the decision but the tweets were swiftly deleted.
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