dear reality hackers,

As some of you may know already, Ola Bini is detained in
Ecuador since more than 24h now, he was caught in the airport before
boarding a trip to Japan that he had planned since long time already
to follow up on his studies.

I am very much concerned by the current circumstances and would like
to call all of you to take action as we need to build pressure against
the Ecuadorian government.

Ola is an outstanding contributor to innovative free and open source
software solutions for privacy, among them also the v4 of OTR. There
are two facts that I believe are important to be taken into account
about the current circumstances:

1. Ola's detention is based on a rather ridicolous "evidence of a
crime" that should concern many security researchers and privacy
activists: the Ecuadorian police statement reads that he "travels
too much to neighboring countries and reads technical books". While
theis seized all his work tools, this accusation partially rests on
his possession of books like "Cyber War" by Richard A. Clarke
https://twitter.com/avilarenata/status/1116916943099969536

2. Ola Bini is a cybersecurity professional on the advisory board of
the flaghship European project DECODE (grant nr 732546) on advanced
cryptographic and privacy by design research for data ownership and
technological sovereignty (see https://decodeproject.eu). The
illegal detainment of Ola Bini is damaging research lead at the
European Commission. As technical coordinator of the project I am
deeply concerned by his incarceration and tampering with his
professional possessions, which may also contain confidential
materials belonging to our project. His detainment is not only
unjustified, but is producing serious damage to European scientific
research. This statement is also backed by DECODE general
coordinator Francesca Bria.

Here you find the statement released by Ola's attorneys in Ecuador
https://goatsing.wordpress.com/2019/04/13/press-release-on-the-detention-of-ola-bini-2/

Here some sources of information to monitor
- https://twitter.com/freeolabini
- https://twitter.com/avilarenata

To get in touch with the #freeolabini legal support coordinators
please email: olabinilegal at riseup dot net

The blog of Ola's Ecuadorian organization "CAD"
https://autonomia.digital/blog/


Free Ola Bini!