A Swedish programmer with purported ties to Wikileaks has been arrested at a Quito airport while trying to board a flight to Japan, as the government of President Lenin Moreno cracks down on the organization founded by Assange, part of its efforts to discredit the organization that recently exposed Moreno for his involvement in a corruption scandal involving offshore accounts.
According to the Associated Press, the individual has been identified as Ola Blini, who described himself in a blog post as a software developer working in Quito for the Center for Digital Autonomy, a group based in Ecuador and Spain involved advocacy related to digital security and privacy.
Before his arrest, Blini noted on his twitter account that María Paula Romo, the Ecuadorian minister of the interior, had announced that there were Russian hackers living in Ecuador and that the government was planning to apprehend them.
To justify the arrest, Romo alleged that the individual or individuals in question had sought to destabilize the government of President Lenin Moreno and that they would be arrested to disrupt what she called a “blackmail ring.”
In a series of tweets published shortly before he was arrested, Blini said Romo’s description sounded “like a witch hunt.”
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