Moreno: Assange hosted hackers
Ecuador’s president has accused Julian Assange of hosting numerous hackers at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to give them directions on how to propagate information on topics important to the WikiLeaks founder and his financiers.
President Lenin Moreno said that Swedish programmer Ola Bini, who is in custody in Ecuador, was one of the hackers who visited Assange many times.
Bini lives in Quito and was detained last week just hours after Moreno evicted Assange from the embassy, allowing him to be arrested by British authorities. Moreno said Bini hacked cellphones and online accounts belonging to both private citizens and Ecuador’s government.
In Quito earlier in the day, Bini’s parents made an anxious plea for authorities to release their son while expressing confidence he did nothing wrong.
‘‘Ola is a friend of Julian Assange, nothing more,’’ said his father, Dag Gustafsson.
Moreno made his allegations while at the Inter-American Dialogue during his five-day visit to Washington. He will not have meetings with officials from the Trump administration.
Assange had enjoyed asylum since 2012 at the embassy in London but relations between him and Ecuadorian officials had grown tense. Moreno’s government has accused Assange of creating conflict by meddling in international affairs.
Assange is in custody in London awaiting sentencing for skipping bail to avoid being sent to Sweden as part of an investigation into a rape allegation. The US is seeking his extradition after charging him with conspiring to break into a Pentagon computer system.
Ecuador’s president suggested Assange was able to operate equipment and collaborate with embassy staffers for a long time thanks to the support of Moreno’s predecessor, Rafael Correa, who granted asylum to Assange.
‘‘There are other answers that fit with someone’s else money, which (this person) kept taking away from Ecuador in order to keep power and in order to go back to power,’’ Moreno said without referring specifically to Correa.