The guy has been in Norwegian detention since October last year after he was detained for his alleged links to development and the selling of Citadel, a Trojan virus used for stealing private info like bank details and passwords.

Citadel is a variant of the botnet Zeus that’s infected millions of computers world wide, primarily through junk emails and phishing messages. Cybercriminals may then get access to a robust net of computers, a botnet, undetected by to the owners of the infected computers, which they are able to use for alternative unlawful actions or illegal bank transfers.

The Russian applications specialist, who’s in his 20s, moved about a year ago to Oestfold in Norway, where he worked for a local IT firm.

“My customer is quite still by the court’s verdict, and they have discovered inadequate reasons for feeling,” defence lawyer Frode Sulland told Norway’s Aftenposten paper. “The opinion demonstrates that Norwegian authorities have counted too what was given to them by the FBI and never have made a sufficiently independent appraisal of the evidence.”

He added that any computer literate person can simply hide their IP address, while the guy hadn’t ever attempted to conceal his identity online.

According to Russian newswire TASS, the prosecution has appealed the verdict as well as the hacker that was accused stays in detention pending a decision on the appeal.