19 Facts About Ola Bini

Ola Bini, was born on Ola Martin Gustafsson in 1982 and is a Swedish programmer and Internet activist, working for the Digital Autonomy Center in Ecuador on issues of privacy, security and cryptography.

Ola Bini has been involved in the design and implementation of programming languages.

In June 2007, Ola Bini left the Karolinska Institutet to join ThoughtWorks for work on the Ruby programming language, including the JRuby core.

Ola Bini has since described him as "the creator of programming languages Seph and Ioke", and noted him as a speaker at the Swecha Freedom Fest doing outreach to students in India.

Ola Bini moved to Ecuador in 2013 as part of his work doing cybersecurity consulting for ThoughtWorks, which contracted with the government of Ecuador that year to advise them on a new law affecting software development.

Ola Bini has worked on several key open source projects, including JRuby, several Ruby libraries, as well as multiple implementations of the secure and open communication protocol OTR.

Ola Bini joined Centro de Autonomia Digital after leaving ThoughtWorks in 2017.

Ola Bini contributed to the European Union's DECODE Project, aimed at "giving people ownership of their personal data", as an advisory board member.

Ola Bini was arrested in an action that appeared to be coordinated with the revocation of asylum and arrest of Julian Assange, whom he counted as a personal friend and visited a dozen times during the time while he was being granted refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy.

The government did not file charges, but made a statement that Ola Bini had been arrested for an "alleged participation in the crime of assault on the integrity of computer systems" that was being investigated.

Ola Bini was arrested the same day at the Quito airport when he was preparing to board a long-scheduled flight to Japan, to which he had planned to travel for training in Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu, a martial art he had practiced since 2007.

Ola Bini was initially sentenced to 90 days in prison in north Quito and his bank accounts were frozen.

Romo alleged that Ola Bini had been involved in the plot with two Russian hackers and the former Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino, who had granted asylum to Assange in 2012, asserting that Ola Bini had travelled with the Foreign Minister to Peru, Spain, and Venezuela.

Ola Bini's lawyers lodged an appeal against his detention on the grounds that he was arrested without a warrant and no evidence of an alleged crime was provided.

On 20 June 2019, after Ola Bini had been in prison for 70 days, the Pichincha provincial court ruled that his detention was illegal and arbitrary and granted his habeas corpus request, ordering that he be released the following day.

Ola Bini was required to remain in Ecuador and to attend the prosecutor's office weekly.

On 31 January 2023, Ola Bini was acquitted of all charges.

Ola Bini is a martial arts practitioner, considering himself a Shugyosha, which is someone traveling a musha shugyo.

Ola Bini received a brown belt for brazilian jiu-jitsu on 10 February 2023.