Web Ninjas hacking group warns police LulzSec suspect may be innocent

A hacking group calling itself Web Ninjas has claimed that the police have arrested the wrong man under suspicion of being a member of LulzSec and Anonymous.

Scotland Yard's Police Central e-crime Unit (PCeU) announced yesterday that they had arrested an unnamed 19 year-old man in the Shetland Islands who goes by the name 'Topiary', but he is likely to be innocent, according to Web Ninjas.

"We have collected enough evidence on Topiary and everything points to a 23 year-old Swedish man. The voice has been matched from his Swedish Anonymous interview to other interviews," the group wrote on LulzSec Exposed.

"Two weeks back, Topiary tried to mislead us with some email conversations to make us believe that Topiary is a UK guy named Daniel Chatfield. We didn't fall for that Troll and then he deleted all his comments on our blog."

Web Ninjas, which has promised to out the leadership of LulzSec, also posted a video of a man they suspect to be the real Topiary, including recordings of interviews.

The PCeU has not released the name of the arrested teenager, nor the identity of a 17 year-old in Lincolnshire whose house was also searched yesterday in connection with the case.

On the face of it, the Shetland Islands is an unlikely location for an internet activist. The islands are 110 miles from the British mainland and the close-knit community is based around fishing, oil and tourism.

The island was, however, one of the first test cases on internet linking. Local newspaper The Shetland Times was the first regional weekly to go online, and in 1996 sued rival web site The Shetland News for stealing its stories. The two settled the case out of court, with The Shetland News agreeing to credit copy.