Gottfrid Svartholm, one of the founders of the high profile BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay, has written an open letter to the Swedish government pleading with officials not to extradite him to Denmark, where he is to stand trial for hacking charges.

Svartholm’s legal troubles began more than a year ago when he was deported from Cambodia, where he had taken up residence, to Sweden for violating the terms of his visa. He was immediately arrested upon arrival in his home country and charged with “invading” the mainframe of Swedish bank Nordea. He was partially convicted in connection with the hack - the verdict pertaining to Nordea was dropped on appeal - along with aggravated fraud and attempted aggravated fraud, and eventually sentenced to one year in prison.

One of four of The Pirate Bay’s founders, Svartholm now faces extradition to neighboring Denmark, where he and an unknown associate are charged with illegally infiltrating the nation’s social security database, driver’s license database, and the shared IT system used in the Schengen zone. The pair is also accused of hacking into the email accounts and retrieving the passwords of 10,000 police officers and tax officials. All of that information, according to Ars Technica, is under the control of American contractor CSC.

If convicted on all charges, Svartholm and his accomplice could be sentenced to six years behind bars.

In a last ditch attempt to stave off extradition, Svartholm filed an appeal with the Swedish Supreme Court and published a letter Sunday addressed to local police, media around the world, and the two sitting members of the European Parliament who belong to the Pirate Party.

He describes two issues with the case against him, the first a claim that the arrest warrant issued against him did not include a detailed description of the crime and his complicity and was therefore incomplete. The second outlines Svartholm’s apparent belief that the charges dismissed against him in the Nordea case should also apply to the Danish case.

“It was found that my computer could have been controlled remotely, and that it had acted as a computer lab/server, accessible to a wider audience. I could therefore not be held responsible for what was found on it,” Svartholm wrote, as quoted by TorrentFreak.

“Liability was thus tried in Sweden for something that very closely matches what Denmark wants to hold me responsible for. It must be investigated whether this act should be considered ‘the same offense’ or not.”

Svartholm’s appeal to the Supreme Court will likely take months to sort out. Yet, if the transfer is approved, Svartholm argues that his extradition would be a violation of international law.

“Overall, I argue that an extradition, if it is executed before [these two issues] have been investigated further, would be contrary to international law and what is to be guaranteed by the European Convention of 4 November 1950 on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms,” he wrote.

While Svartholm has spent years trying to evade international law enforcement, the site he helped create has thrived. The Pirate Bay, the world’s most popular file sharing site, has seen the web browser it launched in August downloaded more than one million times. The browser application, created in response to a growing number of internet companies blocking access to the site, is estimated to have “hundreds of thousands” of users.



