Ola Bini has lived in Ecuador for five years, where he’s worked at the Quito-based Center for Digital Autonomy. During that time, he also traveled to London to meet with Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy.
This all comes as Ecuador’s right-wing President Lenín Moreno is facing a corruption probe after the leak of internal documents exposed he had secretly set up multiple offshore bank accounts. Moreno has accused WikiLeaks of being involved in the leak. Ola Bini has been accused of hacking the Ecuadorian government, but no charges have been filed against him. He remains under investigation, has been barred from leaving Ecuador.
The United States has also expressed interest in Bini’s case. The Associated Press reported earlier this month the U.S. Justice Department has received permission from Ecuadorian authorities to question him.
Ola Bini talking:
Why was I arrested? That’s a very, very good question. We don’t know. We’re still trying to get an answer to this. In fact, through the whole process, 70 days in prison and all the days since, we have been asking the prosecution to tell us what it is I have done, and they still haven’t actually given us any single answer. So, getting released, getting a tribunal, getting a tribunal telling us that they accepted our habeas corpus, that my detention and arrest was illegal, has been a very, very good victory for us, showing what we have been saying from the beginning, that this process has simply not been regularly done. And we are still waiting to understand what it is I’m supposed to have done.
I woke up on the early morning on Thursday, April 11th, and I received the news about what happened to Julian. And then, a few hours later, I went to the airport, because I had a previously planned trip to Japan, and I was planning on leaving, purely on coincidence the same day. And when I went to the gate, when I came to the gate, I was detained by people who said they were police officers, but not providing any identification.
At this point, I have no idea why it happened the same day. The prosecution has tried to introduce Julian Assange as a component of the case he’s trying to make against me, but no strict connections have been made so far. So, we don’t know.
they took all of my equipment. Oh, so, they took all of my equipment that I had with me when I was at the airport. And later, during the night, they actually took me to the outside of my apartment. They told me they had an order to enter my apartment, but they never showed the order to enter my apartment. Then they asked if I was willing to help them come in, and voluntarily help them. I said I needed my lawyer to do that. And they denied—they ignored that request and entered without my permission. And as far as I know, all of my technical equipment in my apartment has been taken. They have also taken about 14 or 15 books that are primarily about computer science. And this was presented during the first hearing.
In terms of what has happened with it, we have had several hearings at the forensics lab here in Quito, where they have asked me to provide the passwords for my devices. I have refused to provide the passwords, primarily because they still haven’t told me what I’ve done. So, what I’ve told the prosecutor is, once they tell me what I’ve done, when I’ve done it, how I’ve done it, where I’ve done it, I will consider helping them. But until then, we are not going to do that. The last hearing we had, the technical division said that they don’t know how to open my devices, and they were going to ask for international help. And that’s the last official information that we have about this.
I received the request to interview me on Tuesday in this week. This was a request from the Ecuadorian judiciary. And when you receive that kind of request, you cannot deny it. So, I was planning on presenting myself and going there with my lawyer and see what questions they were going to ask. However, on Friday, we found out that the United States government has actually withdrawn the request. And they are now not interested in asking me any questions anymore, apparently.
– some of Julian Assange’s or all of his equipment, the Ecuadorian government had perhaps given it to the British government, from the Ecuadorian Embassy, where he lived for about seven years.
Julian Assange is only a friend of mine. I have never worked with Julian. I have never worked with WikiLeaks. And I am categorically not a member of WikiLeaks, and I have never been a member of WikiLeaks.
This is a little bit confusing, because, of course, the prosecution hasn’t accused me of anything. In fact, I’m being investigated under what’s called a delito. And this delito, or a statute, is basically just a category of a type of crime. And this crime is basically that I have in some way adversely impacted the integrity of computer systems. But what that actually means with computer systems that I have impacted in any way, we have no idea. Now, of course, the president has gone on TV and saying that I have done things— like breaking into computer systems, breaking into mobile phones and stealing documents. But this is not something that the
– Ecuador’s right-wing President Lenín Moreno is facing a corruption probe after the leak of internal documents exposed he had secretly set up multiple offshore bank accounts. Moreno has accused WikiLeaks of being involved in the leak. Ola Bini has been accused of hacking the Ecuadorian government, but no charges have been filed against him.
So, this leak, first of all, we have to be careful. The president has never actually accused me of any leak, as far as I know. The prosecution has never accused me of any leak. The only place that has linked me to any kind of leak was on Facebook. So, and the funny part is, of course, I don’t actually know anything about this leak. I’ve never read it. I’ve never seen the pictures that they talk about. So, what the president said on TV has been—
This was something that came out after I was actually arrested, so I’ve only been told about it by secondhand. And also, of course, I don’t have a Facebook account, so I’ve never seen it myself, even after coming out.
So, the president on TV has accused me of breaking into a system, of breaking into mobile phones and of also stealing information. But when we called him to give testimony or give his version of events, he actually claimed that he didn’t know anything about the situation, and he claimed that the information he was relaying came from the minister of the interior, María Paula Romo. But when we asked María Paula Romo and she gave her version, her testimony, she actually claimed that they didn’t have any evidence of me having committed any crimes whatsoever, which is in complete contradiction because on TV she has claimed they do have evidence of me committing a crime.
the conditions have actually been pretty terrible. I was lucky enough to be in one the most—one of the safest and best parts of the prison where I was being held, in CDP El Inca. But there was extreme overcrowding in the whole prison. We were 95 people in my cell block, in a cell block that had 17 cells. We were sleeping about eight people in my cell. I spent the first month sleeping on the floor, on the concrete floor, because there was no possibility of having mattresses or beds for everyone. The sanitary conditions were extremely bad, no access to clean water, most of the time no access to any water at all, and never any access to warm water. People were sick through most of this period. And, of course, there were a lot of violence and a lot of danger in this environment, as well. I would say that, in my opinion, the people—the over 2,000 people that are being held at El Inca are being held in inhuman conditions.
So, we’ve tried several times to get me out, initially by appealing, having an appeal hearing and appealing the decision to imprison me. Second, we tried to get me out on bail, and that was also denied, for reasons that were quite astounding to us. But finally, we submitted a writ of habeas corpus, and the tribunal accepted this habeas corpus. And the habeas corpus showed—or, the tribunal’s decision showed that the habeas corpus was correct, because the initial detainment was done in an illegal way, in several different illegal ways, as a matter of fact.
I’m very sad about what happened to Julian. I think that—I’m both sad and I’m worried about my friend. I think that what Ecuador—Ecuador revoking his asylum and allowing the British police to come in and arrest him was something that they had promised to not do. And the way they did it, actually, was really, really bad.
And I do feel like there is a wider crackdown. I think that global surveillance, global—the global crackdown on people working in security and privacy fields, and this general feeling that privacy is not a human right anymore, this is something that scares me a lot, because, for me, privacy is one of the most important rights we have. It’s the fundamental right for democracy, in my opinion. So, it scares me that this is a trend that we’re seeing more and more over the last few years.
over the last 10 years, privacy and security has been my main passion. And the work I do is really two different kinds of work. Primarily, I am a software developer, so I write programs that I give away to the whole world, that tries to improve people’s security. I work and collaborate with different organizations to do this, so it’s not work that I do alone. For example, I’ve been part of the advisory board for the DECODE project that the European Commission has created, that is meant to increase decentralization and privacy of citizens in the European Union. I’ve also contributed to many different projects, including Tor, including OTR and other projects that are meant to protect the security and privacy of everyone in the world.
Another part of my work has been, as a security expert, I sometimes get asked by friends around the world, outside of Ecuador—has been asking me to come and help them give advice on security. For example, journalists that work on investigating extrajudicial killings, they’re facing extreme threats and extreme risks. And sometimes I’ve gone and helped these kind of people, giving them advice on how to be more secure. Of course, I cannot mention any names of organizations where I’ve helped, but that kind of work has also been an important part of what I do.
I think that people that are friends of Julian are being targeted. And I think that people that care about human rights are being targeted.
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Ola Bini
Swedish programmer and data privacy activist.
— source democracynow.org | Jun 24, 2019