The Timisoara Court of Appeal on Friday rejected the FBI’s extradition request for Romanian Marcel Lazar Lehel, a famous hacker known as Guccifer.

The FBI officially asked his extradition in December last year. Lazar, who has been convicted in Romania for hacking the e-mail accounts of several personalities and revealing some of their personal correspondence, was not present at the hearing, as he is currently serving time in the Arad Penitentiary, reports local Economica.net.

In the summer of 2014, Guccifer, a former taxi driver, was jailed in Romania for seven years for having hacked into the e-mail accounts of the former Romanian Intelligence Service SRI director George Maior, of MEP Corina Cretu (now the European Commissioner for Regional Policies), as well as those of several movie and TV stars.

He is also believed to have accessed the e-mail accounts of international officials, among which former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, members of the Bush family, Rockefellers, and Obama administration officials.

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com