EFF: Ecuador has no reason to detain Swedish privacy activist

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and several developer organizations, among others, have called on Ecuador to immediately release Ola Bini. They speak of illegal detention and state that he is an innocent developer. Ecuador has no reason to detain him, according to the EFF.

Swedish programmer and privacy activist Ola Bini was arrested last Thursday at the Quito airport in Ecuador while on his way to Japan for allegedly colluding with WikiLeaks to destabilize the government. According to the EFF, Ecuador has made Ola part of a media story claiming that he is part of a group of Russian hackers who planned to destabilize the country. This would be revenge in response to the recent arrest of Julian Assange. According to María Paula Romo, the interior minister, Ola Julian has visited Assange many times in recent years.

On a specially opened website, the various organizations are calling on people to join a campaign to get Bini released. In a statement, he is described by the drafters as a developer who is not a criminal at all and has been detained on illegal grounds. This allegedly violated basic rights for suspects, such as information about the allegations, no access to the Swedish consul for a long time or a translation into Swedish. A judge has ordered a 90-day pre-trial detention in which, according to the EFF, questionable evidence was presented and all the arguments of the defense were dismissed.

Ola Bini is an internet security expert, open source software developer and privacy activist who has lived in Ecuador with a valid residency permit for six years. Among other things, he contributed to the European Union’s Decode privacy project.