PM Brown apologises for persecution of Alan Turing

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has issued a posthumous apology to Bletchley Park codebreaker Alan Turing, who helped Britain defeat Hitler but later killed himself after being prosecuted because of his sexuality.

A coalition of computer scientists, historians and gay rights campaigners including Stephen Fry and Peter Tatchell had backed a campaign demanding that the man regarded as the father of modern computer science should be pardoned, and the Prime Minister has now acknowledged that Turing had been treated "terribly" and said he was "deeply sorry".

During World War II Turing worked at Bletchley Park and helped create the device that cracked the Nazi's Enigma codes, a vital breakthrough in the war effort. He was credited by Winston Churchill as making the biggest single contribution to the Allied victory.

Turing was also a leading light in the fields of artificial intelligence and computing. After the war he worked at the University of Manchester, where he worked on the Manchester Mark 1 - one of the first recognisable modern computers. A memorial statue of him in Manchester's Sackville Gardens was unveiled in 2001.

But in 1952 Turing was convicted of "gross indecency" after admitting to an affair with another man. His "treatment" was to be chemically castrated, and he was also stripped of his security clearance and could no longer work at GCHQ. Two years later he killed himself, aged 41.

The campaign to pardon him was led by computer scientist John Graham-Cumming who set up an online petition that attracted more than 30,000 signatures. It was backed by author Ian McEwan and scientist Richard Dawkins. Stephen Fry even used his Twitter feed to urge followers to demand an apology from Brown.

The Prime Minister said: "The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely... Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted, under homophobic laws, were treated terribly."

Turing's three nieces said they were "delighted" and "very glad" to see the injustice recognised. However, as none of his immediate family is still alive a formal pardon cannot be issued. ·