'Chaos Monkeys' author calls Apple's statement on his departure defamatory

FILE PHOTO: The Apple Inc logo is shown outside the company's 2016 Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, California, U.S. June 13, 2016. REUTERS/Stephen Lam

(Reuters) - An Apple Inc engineer who left the company this week after thousands of coworkers signed a petition calling for him to be sacked said on Twitter he was fired "in a snap decision" and that Apple made defamatory statements about him.

Apple said on Wednesday that Antonio García Martínez, a former Facebook Inc product manager who joined its advertising business in April, was no longer with the company. The iPhone maker made the move after more than 2,000 Apple employees signed an internal petition objecting to what they denounced as sexist and racist views in his 2016 book "Chaos Monkeys" about working in Silicon Valley.