Redhack members acquitted in terror case

An Ankara criminal court ruled on March 15 for the acquittal of ten Redhack members charged with supporting left-separatist terror organizations.

Prosecutor ?aban Yavuz demanded an acquittal on the grounds the defendants were not proven guilty as charged in a summary judgment heard on March 15. The Interior Ministry was also a complainant in the case.

The group allegedly hacked the websites of the Ankara and K?r?kkale police departments and a detention warrant was issued in 2012. Seven of the suspects had been arrested on charges of committing an offense in the name of the organization without being a member of it. Three of them served nine months in prison while the others remained imprisoned for various lengths of time.

Hakan Yüksel, who was the prosecutor at the time, described the acts of Redhack as "debilitating state authority."

"When the standing rule of Red Hackers Association is viewed, it can be seen that their ultimate goal is to support destructive left wing terror organizations by technological means, to seize public safety information by hacking the websites of public institutions and to form a configuration scheme in order to bring communist order based on Marxist-Leninist and Moist ideology," Yüksel's ticket read.

RedHack, which was dubbed Turkey's first cyber terror organization, hit the headlines when it leaked documents obtained from the Ankara police department's network in 2012 and published them online.

Since then, the hackers have infiltrated dozens of websites ranging from Turkey's Higher Education Board (YÖK) and ministries, to the Constitutional Court. Recently, Twitter suspended the social media account of the group on July 2014.