Gay Girl in Damascus is a 40-year-old married man living in Edinburgh

So the joke is on all of us. The now infamous blogger 'A Gay Girl In Damascus', a.k.a. Amina Abdallah Arraf al-Omari, a 25-year-old half-Syrian half-American lesbian living in Damascus who was "abducted" last week was in fact a 40-year-old American Middle East activist called Tom MacMaster who is studying at Edinburgh University.

MacMaster started writing the popular blog in February this year and due to the recent unrest in Syria it was followed intensely by news agencies and activists around the world.

However, last week he posted that "Amina" had been abducted by armed men not to be seen or heard of since. That last post caused worldwide concern and received a lot of media attention leading to "Amina's photo" being plastered on every news website (including Current.com) as a genuine news story.

The real woman, whose picture MacMaster had used as the profile pic of his fictional "Amina" character spotted her picture in the news and came forward saying her identity had ben stolen and that she worried for her safety. The woman in question was Jelena Lecic, a Croatian woman living in London who had nothing to do with Syria.

In an interview with the BBC MacMaster defended his actions saying:

"I really felt a number of years ago, in discussions on Middle East issues in the US, often when I presented real facts and opinions, the immediate reaction to someone with my name was: 'Why are you anti-American? Why are you anti-Jewish?' So I invented a name to talk under that would keep the focus on the actual issue."

MacMaster said he had wanted people to listen to the facts without paying attention to "the man behind the curtain", claiming that the success of the blog took him by surprise.

He said: "From the beginning I never expected it to get anywhere near the attention it has.

"I thought when I was starting I would be read by four, five, maybe as many as 10 people."

MacMaster told the BBC that he accepted the concerns that he may have made it harder for bloggers within Syria, and that he had backed up government claims there were no problems in the country and that it was all "foreign lies".

He said: "However, the reality is that I have been in contact with a lot of people inside Syria and I have been following things very closely."

He said the most important thing was to "get the information out" and  added: "People should stop focussing on the hoaxer and really be focussing on the most important people, the real people who are suffering in Syria."

You can read Tom MacMaster's full apology here.