#FreeOlaBini: Ola Bini Still In Jail, Show Trial Ongoing

[grarpamp]

https://twitter.com/olabini/status/1485692487020822542
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gLQrjHPoqM NMA: 51st State
https://olabini.se/blog
#FreeOlaBini

Ola Bini @olabini
22h
Last week the trial against me finally started. We spent 3 days with
prosecution witnesses, and then the trial was suspended indefinitely.
In this thread I'll try to tell you all some of the things that
happened. 1/69
Jan 24, 2022 · 7:14 PM UTC
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
But first, there were several observers at this hearing. I really
appreciate all their support. If you read Spanish, ODJ has extremely
good coverage from all these days, at @odjecuador. 2/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
I just mentioned that we only spent time with the prosecution
witnesses. Specifically, we heard 14 witnesses in total, over 3 days.
They still have 3 more witnesses. CNT has 1 witness. And the defense
has 33 witnesses. 3/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
On top of all that, each side will also present documentary evidence
of various kinds, and then there's the closing arguments from each
side. So how could this trial have been scheduled for only 3 days?
4/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
In fact, it's worse than that. On the official documents from the
prosecution, they were planning to call over 50 witnesses, and so did
the defense. How could the tribunal ever think that 3 days would be
enough? 5/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
As usual in my process, there were a huge number of new violations. We
heard lies, contradictions and complete fabrications. And we heard
technical details that once again disprove the accusations against me.
6/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
I can't really describe all of these things - it's simply too much. So
as you read, assume that ten times more things happened of the same
character. 7/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
Let's begin with the environment of the trial. The hearing was a mix
of remote and in-person. However, the remote connections were full of
problems. Sometimes it was impossible to hear. 8/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
And for transferring official documents to witnesses, a process was
used where the lawyers took photographs of the documents with their
phones, and sent them over WhatsApp... 9/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
There were a large police presence in the trial room - cops from
various different groups - not only the ones from the judicial
building. These officers were often acting intimidating and
threatening. 10/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
One thing you are never allowed in an Ecuador court room is to take
photos, videos or recordings. However, we saw cops doing exactly this
at least three times. 11/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
When we tried to bring it to the attention of the judges, they
threatened to throw out the person from the public reporting it, while
the cop taking photos did not receive any consequences. 12/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
In the same way, witnesses were not allowed to look in or hear the
proceedings. But the doors were open and sometimes witnesses stood
there. The cops guarding the room saw this but never did anything.
13/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
Two witnesses from the prosecutor side were actually removed as
witnesses because the judges considered them contaminated. These two
witnesses would have been helpful for us to prove more violations...
14/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
We think it is possible that the prosecutors office actually
instructed these witnesses to let themselves be contaminated, in order
to remove their potential testimony. 15/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
In general, the cops were harassing people supporting me, including
telling them to stop using their mobile phones, even though this is
actually allowed. The prosecutor side had no such problem. 16/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
ODJ reports the same behavior, where my supporters were treated in a
completely different way, and harassed by the cops. 17/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
Through these three days, one of the more constant things was that the
main judge critized the prosecutor for lack of understanding of the
process. The prosecutor did a large number of interventions. 18/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
However, almost none of them were actually allowed. In some cases the
judge literally said to the prosecutor "you can't object to that!". He
was also critized for not managing the case well at all. 19/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
As I've mentioned before, Ecuador has this system with specialized
experts called "peritos". These are the people that write expert
reports about different subjects, and takes part in the forensic
analysis. 20/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
About half the witnesses we heard were actually peritos, mostly from
Criminalística (which is the forensic laboratory of the national
police here in Ecuador). Sadly, there were a large number of problems
with these expert reports. 21/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
The absolutely worst mistake was probably the expert who was supposed
to "materialize" a video from the internet. (This process basically
means to make a copy of the video and put it on permanent storage
material and then document the procedure in a report). 22/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
This was asked to be done pretty early in the process by my defense,
and of course, this is official evidence, so subject to a stringent
chain of custody requirements. 23/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
Imagine our surprise when we ask to have this video played for the
tribunal, and the perito takes out the CD and plays the one file on
it. And this video is something _completely_ different from the video
in his report. 24/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
Of course, this can be for any type of reason, including that the
perito made a mistake or someone has manipulated the chain of custody.
Irrespective, this count as another fraud in the penal process. 25/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
Adding insult to injury, the video replacing the one we asked for was
from another case, and could potentially have contained sensitive or
private information, which was now exposed to the audience in my
trial. 26/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
Another notable example was from several network experts that did not
know what routable and non-routable addresses are. Another expert who
uses hashes in their daily work said that the hash-length is the only
measure of security. 27/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
Just to be clear, the questions around hashes were based on how they
are used to ensure the integrity of digital evidence in the chain of
custody. But these experts don't know what they mean. 28/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
Another terrible incident came up when the experts actually admitted
to changing the configuration of devices in the chain of custody,
while maintaining that there's no problem with doing this. 29/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
On top of that, the transcript from a private hearing made it clear to
the tribunal that the prosecutor had ordered some configuration
changes as well. In theory this should invalidate the evidence
completely. 30/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
But do you think the judges ruled to take this evidence out? No, of
course not. And this was a trend through the whole proceeding. 31/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
One aspect of the perito system in Ecuador is that these people are
treated as authorities by the tribunal. They can speculate about
motives, saying them as fact, and the tribunal will simply accept it.
32/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
One perito was talking about the design of my home network which he
had analyzed (and gotten wrong, incidentally). A judge asked _why_ the
network was like that. The perito answered with a statement of fact.
33/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
This statement was completely incorrect, and he had no reason to come
to that conclusion. But the tribunal simply accepted it. My lawyers
tell me this is normal. To me, that is terrifying. 34/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
The same day, another perito was talking about encryption, saying
things about how asymmetric encryption is always stronger than
symmetric encryption, and directly comparing key bit sizes between
them. 35/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
He also mentioned that he knew my hard drives were encrypted with
asymmetric encryption. Then, later, he said he had assumed that since
I had devices such as GPG card readers. 36/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
Finally, he said that he had never said my drives were encrypted with
asymmetric encryption. Once again, contradicting himself and objective
technical fact. 37/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
These kinds of things from the technical experts were extremely common
through every day. I won't document more of them - you can just
imagine a continuation of similar kinds of problems as already
mentioned. 38/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
The absolutely first witness in the trial was a cop that started
talking about "dirty criminals" and "criminal foreigners" before the
judge stopped him, saying this kind of speech was not acceptable.
39/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
In general, the police witnesses were acting very nervously through
the proceeding. We often caught them in lies and contradictions. The
worst one was probably the one that made up his whole testimony. 40/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
The first witness on Thursday morning was extremely tough for me. He
is the one that was in charge of my illegal detention and was with me
through the whole process until I was put in holding cells. 41/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
Seeing him was quite traumatic. My remaining memory of him is how he
kept lying about what was happening, avoiding to give me any
information about what was happening, and keeping me from my lawyers.
42/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
This police, just as the other, were very clear that they didn't have
_any_ indication of a crime when they detained me. Everyone says they
just followed orders to detain me. 43/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
What about the accusations in the opening statements then? You would
imagine that these should contain more specifics about the crime I'm
supposed to have committed, right? 44/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
Sadly, that's not what happened. Instead, the prosecutor was super
vague, simply saying I'm accused of breaking in to the network of CNT.
He also added a bunch of hypotheticals. 45/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
In fact, most of his opening allegation were things along the lines of
"Maybe he came to Ecuador to work as a hacker". He also claimed I have
been recruiting people to do crimes on Twitter. 46/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
The CNT accusation was more specific - but what they claim I did
actually contradicts their own evidence. 47/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
In fact, we have only had one witness that directly talked about
anything related to the accusation - this was a technical person that
testified on Thursday afternoon. 48/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
His testimony also contradicts the accusation from CNT. And what's
also interesting, he made it clear that the prosecutor has never asked
for any information from him, except for the IP address in the alleged
picture of a screen. 49/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
No questions about other IP addresses. No questions about equipment.
Logs. Firewalls. Configuration. Nothing of the kind you would need to
actually prove an IT-related crime. 50/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
Of course, the obvious conclusion is that the Ecuador government never
cared about the alleged crime in the first place - they just wanted
the surface to look good enough. 51/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
On the same line, the prosecutor tried to imply that my Telconet
service was unusual in some way, weird, expensive and potentially
criminal. Once again, the prosecutors own witness contradicted him.
52/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
In fact, this witness confirmed that my service was _not_ unusual and
that many others paid significantly more. 53/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
This strategy of trying to paint me as a bad person probably peaked
with the weird display of a video and news article that had absolutely
nothing to do with me at all. 54/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
Even more interesting is that neither CNT nor the prosecutor asked
_any_ questions related to this. In fact, we saw the same behavior
with other witnesses. No or few questions asked at all. 55/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
And remember, these witnesses are witnesses for the prosecution,
displaying evidence that the prosecution has asked for. Maybe they're
hoping the tribunal will draw weird conclusions on their own. 56/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
The theme for Friday was violations of my rights. Specifically, the
prosecution and experts displayed a large number of personal messages
from my phones. These messages were often of a personal nature. 57/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
Including conversations with my then wife, her family and relatives,
my own family members and so on. All of this publicly on display in
the court room. 58/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
Weirdly, one of my phones had all of its content extracted and added
to the file, but the other phone they treated differently, in order to
"protect my privacy". But why was it OK with the other phone? 59/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
These kinds of inconsistencies show that protecting my rights and
privacy was never of any concern. And further, the tribunal did not
seem to care about these issues either. 60/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
In fact, the tribunal made a judgment about my main phone, basically
saying that everything the prosecution had done with it was declared
legal. 61/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
This includes things such as prohibiting access to the content of the
phone to my defense, while the prosecution had full access to it.
Apparently the tribunal thinks this is legal. 62/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
I probably don't have to remind anyone on the international rules
around proportionality, the right to defend yourself, preservation of
human rights and so on... 63/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
On top of this, at the end of the three days the prosecution tried to
display evidence that had never been approved or announced, and that
my defense never had gotten access to. 64/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
This was denied - but probably more because it was late in the day.
And these audio files were still used by the prosecution and will be
part of other evidence which the tribunal has accepted. 65/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
Overall, this beginning of the trial was consistent with what I
suspected would happen. I had hoped that I would be wrong, and that we
would end up with a just hearing. 66/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
But once again, we are stuck in a case where the government and the
judicial system will violate all my rights in order to condemn me -
ignoring also the fact that the evidence shows I'm innocent. 67/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
The judges announced at the end that they will need to schedule at
least 5 more days, and that this will be hard to do. My expectation is
that the trial will not resume in the next few months. 68/69
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Ola Bini @olabini
22h
As always, this was a hard and frustrating week. It never gets easier
being at the center of this kind of madness. 69/69
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