Ankara public prosecutor acquitted ten suspects from RedHack from terror charges citing lack of evidence
10 alleged members of Turkey’s top hacker group, RedHack have been acquitted of terrorism charges by a Public Prosecutor in Turkey’s capital Ankara.
The 10 members of the group were indicted for hacking into various Turkish government websites like the ruling Justice and Development Party, the Turkish police force, Turkish national petroleum company OPET and lots of public utility websites.
The Turkish police force had arrested 10 alleged members of RedHack and charged them with acting on behalf of Marxist, Leninist, Maoist, leftist and separatist terrorist organizations. The indictment read, “Hence, even though they are not members of those terrorist organizations, RedHack members can be considered to have perpetrated crimes in the name of those organizations.”
If proven guilty, the 10 members of RedHack would have faced a prison time of upto 24 years. RedHack on its part refuted the allegations and stated that the police and the prosecutors were clamping down on them in an effort to crackdown on anti Erdogan opposition. It also maintained that the three of the ten suspects arrested by the Turkish police were university students and had no relation to the group whatsoever.
The public prosecutor said that there were no firm indicators that the crimes attributed to the arrested members of RedHacks were carried out by the group.
The RedHack Twitter post announced the acquittal as soon as the order was passed by the public prosecutor.
https://twitter.com/RedHack_EN/status/577409634685853696
Recently, in November, 2014, the RedHack had hacked the website of Turkey Electricity Transmission Company. After hacking into the website, the RedHack’s allegedly deleted pending electricity bills of Turkish citizens amounting to Turkish Lira 1.5 trillion. This amounts to 668523705000.00 US Dollar at current market rate however this was not independently confirmed.
