Three Years After BS Arrest For Hacking, Swedish Digital Rights Activist Freed By Ecuadorian Court
In April 2019, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was booted from the Ecuadorian embassy in London and arrested by UK authorities on behalf of the US to face criminal charges related to CIA leaks provided by Chelsea Manning.
He was not the only activist with an Ecuadorian nexus to be arrested that day. Ola Bini, a Swedish open source developer and digital rights activist, was arrested at the Quito Airport by Ecuadorian police for allegedly hacking CNT, a local telecommunications company. The arrest appeared to be collateral damage from the Assange expulsion - the politically motivated targeting of a Wikileaks-adjacent activist by a government official who claimed (despite knowing otherwise) that Bini was a dangerous hacker.
His arrest occurred shortly after Maria Paula Romo, then Ecuador's Interior Minister, held a press conference to claim (without evidence) that a group of Russians and Wikileaks-connected hackers were in the country, planning a cyber-attack in retaliation for the government's eviction of Assange; a recent investigation by La Posta revealed that the former Minister knew that Ola Bini was not the Russian hacker" the government was looking for when Bini was detained in Quito's airport. (Romo was dismissed as minister in 2020 for ordering the use of tear gas against anti-government protestors).
Bini was held for 70 days without being criminally charged. After a court forced prosecutors to get on with the prosecuting, Bini was released to his family while the government built its case. And what a case it was. The only evidence prosecutors had was a screenshot of CNT's telnet login screen, one that appeared to have been taken by Bini as he informed a local system administrator of this apparent security hole.
Bini's defense team has documented dozens of instances of prosecutorial misconduct. At one point, the judge overseeing the case was removed after sustained complaints about due process violations. Finally, nearly four years after being arrested, Bini is free, handed a verdict of innocence by the court.
Swedish software developer and digital rights activist Ola Bini was acquitted of charges of hacking a computer on Tuesday, January 31 by a court in Quito. The activist was acquitted unanimously by a tribunal of three judges after delivering a nearly 4.5-hour-long statement. Bini has faced persecution from the Ecuadorian state since 2019, and the legal proceedings against him have been marred by irregularities.
Speaking after the verdict to Peoples Dispatch, Carlos Soria, a member of the legal team for Bini, termed the tribunal's unanimous verdict unexpected" and a very nice surprise," considering all the irregularities, over 100 violations of due process, and adverse judgments over the nearly four years since Bini was first arrested.
Prosecutors have already stated they plan to appeal this ruling, which means Bini isn't completely free yet. But given the extensive prosecutorial misconduct documented in this case, it's safe to say the court didn't spend more than four hours congratulating the government on putting up a good fight. Of course, the government has all the time and money it needs to continue pursuing a vindictive prosecution even the official initiating it knew targeted the wrong person.