Following a two-week trial, the Nacka District Court handed down its verdict in June. Gottfrid was found guilty of hacking, aggravated fraud and attempted aggravated fraud, and was given a two-year jail sentence.

In July it was revealed that appeals had been filed by both the defense and prosecution – one hoping to have the sentence quashed and the other hoping for even more jail time.

During the hearing this week at the Court of Appeal, Tor developer and former Wikileaks spokesman Jacob Appelbaum gave evidence on a key part of the defense’s case, that Gottfrid’s computer was controlled by a third-party who also carried out the hack attacks.

According to IDG, Appelbaum heavily criticized the conclusions drawn by the police following the investigation carried out on Gottfrid’s computers.

Police and prosecutors had come to the conclusion that were no traces left behind on Gottfrid’s computers at the times and dates when the hacks against Logica and Nordea were carried out. But Appelbaum said that the police should have looked at a wider range of applications that could have been compromised.

The hacker, a well-respected security expert, said that not only could control of the computer have been carried out using Python and Neko, but it would have been trivial to hide any traces of that.

“It’s so simple that there are blog posts showing how to do it,” he said.

However, the issue for the Court of Appeal is not really if it is possible to hack a computer, hack an IT company and a bank, and then leave no traces. The Court has to consider how likely it is that those sequence of events actually occurred.

For his part, Gottfrid says that the attack did take place but it was carried out by one or more of his friends.

Whether the Court believes this version of events will become known in two weeks when its decision is handed down.

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Upon completion of that detention Gottfrid stool trial again in May, this time in connection with alleged hacking offenses carried out against Logica, a Swedish IT company working with local tax authorities and local bank Nordea.

After a two-week trial the Nacka District Court handed down its verdict in June. The Court found Gottfrid guilty of hacking, aggravated fraud and attempted aggravated fraud, handing down a two-year jail sentence. A 36-year-old accomplice was given probation.

Last month it was revealed that both the defense and prosecution would be filing appeals, with the former hoping for a more detailed examination of the evidence and the latter seeking a tougher jail sentence.

That process is due to get underway shortly in the Court of Appeal and will receive a boost from one of the world’s most famous security experts.

In a move that’s likely to attract the attention of the world’s press, Tor developer and former Wikileaks spokesman Jacob Appelbaum will be giving testimony at the appeal.

Appelbaum, previously described by Rolling Stone as “the most dangerous man in cyberspace” and recently linked to an interview with Edward Snowden, will appear for the defense in support of Gottfrid’s assertion that the security of his computers was breached.

Much of the evidence in the original trial was obtained from a computer seized from Gottfrid’s apartment in Cambodia where he was detained in 2012. While the evidence found on the machine linked the device to the hacks, Gottfrid has always maintained that they were accessed remotely by a third party.

According to IDG, Appelbaum’s interview will take place next week, September 4.

As a core member of the Tor project and one of the world’s leading online anonymity experts, Appelbaum provides training to human rights groups and journalists on how to stay invisible online. If anyone knows how to access a computer and disappear, he does, and the defense will be hoping that this time round the court sees Gottfrid’s evidence in a new light.

Update: Gottfrid’s mother Kristina Svartholm informs TorrentFreak that she visited her son this morning who commented briefly on the earlier ruling.

“We don’t like you,” Gottfrid said, as he described his assessment of how the court in the original trial viewed him. Kristina told us that she hopes that the members of the Appeal Court “will like him a bit more” than those in the lower court did.

“In the Swedish system you are in principle not allowed to bring any new evidence into the Appeal Court. The court watches video recordings from lower court,” Kristina explained. “In this case they allowed the defence to bring a new witness [Appelbaum] – I don’t know how common this is.”

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