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High Court judge gives hacker McKinnon hope
If the legal arguments last beyond the election, McKinnon should escape extradition
The family of Gary McKinnon, the Asperger's sufferer facing extradition to the US and a lengthy jail sentence for hacking into military computers, have finally been given hope. A High Court judge yesterday ordered a judicial review of Home Secretary Alan Johnson's recent decision not to block his extradition, saying Johnson "may have" acted unlawfully.
Whatever the review decides, the point is that it is likely to take months of legal argument to get there. If it can be delayed beyond election day (June 3 at the latest), and the Conservatives are returned to power, then McKinnon could be home and dry.
The Tories have made it clear that they sympathise with McKinnon's case and aim to change the law so that cases like his are heard in the UK. Certainly, a Tory Home Secretary can be expected to take the opposite view to that of Labour's Alan Johnson.
Johnson was offered fresh medical advice last November by Professor Jeremy Turk, a consultant psychiatrist, who said McKinnon was suicidal and would "almost inevitably" seek to take his own life if he is extradited. McKinnon, he said, had a "fixed psychological conviction" that he would kill himself in preference to being extradited.
But Johnson ignored the advice and ruled that the 43-year-old should be handed over to the American authorities.
Judge Mitting granted McKinnon's lawyers a judicial review because, he said, it was "arguable" that a warning of suicide was grounds under human rights law to stop extradition.
McKinnon's mother, Janis Sharp, said of yesterday's ruling: "I can't believe it - some commonsense at last. This judge has made such an honourable and decent decision. The relief is incredible, indescribable. We've fought for so long for compassion and understanding."
The argument of those who back McKinnon - not just his family, but many supporters across the country - has remained the same throughout the long saga of failed appeals: that he is autistic, suffering from Asperger's Syndrome, and that far from acting maliciously when he hacked into the Pentagon and Nasa computers shortly after 9/11, he was looking for evidence of UFOs. ·
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Any person who is suicidal and has a disease such as Asperger's Syndrome, should not be extradited to the U.S.
We here in America, jail anyone and everyone even though it will be harmful to them psychologically and physically. American jails are notorious for the rape and torture of prisoners who by dint of their diseases cannot protect themselves from the predators in state and Federal prisons.
Jail rape is common among men! This is a known fact that nothing is done about, stand your ground! Don't let this young man be extradited to this country or he will by reason of mental defect take his own life out of the sheer torture that is American prisons.
From the vantage point of "Eurasia", it is quite disturbing to witness that nations within "Oceania" deliver their nominal citizens to each other.
One must wonder what the hell the U.K. thinks her business to be within the E.U. other than the dishonourable function of a Trojan Horse for the (sinking) empire.
I can well imagine a time, when a Great Britain, upon whose empire the sun once never set, would have told some uppity Yanks in nice, diplomatic terms to put their extradition request "where the sun don't* shine!" What happened? Has Britain turned into a hapless vassal?
Isn't it the duty of any government first and foremost, to protect its own citizens against any abuse from abroad? Gary McKinnon's Asperger's is muddling the issue -- THAT certainly should not be the criterion, upon which the extradition request should be denied. The alleged crime, if any, was obviously committed in the U.K. -- the U.S. can sue in a British Court all they want to, without having to lay their bloody (lit.) hands on a British subject.
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* using bastardized English eases the communication with U.S.-Americans. ;o)
Happy New Year from Germany,
Of course both British and United States governments are very hot on torture where security is supposed. Let us hope that in this case given the particular individual and circumstance that the waterboarding and so forth will be missed out. The more so because the evidence that comes out of torture is inherently unreliable and should not be allowed.