Boris asks Obama to forgive Gary McKinnon

Boris Johnson (pictured) has used his Daily Telegraph column to make a direct plea to President Barack Obama on behalf of one of his more colourful London constituents, Gary McKinnon, the 43-year-old computer hacker who the US has spent the last seven years trying to extradite for breaching the Pentagon's security files.
 
The London mayor begins with some words of praise, one leader to another – "Way to go, Mr President. I think we can all agree that it has been a cracking first week" – before calling on Obama to give up the quest to bring McKinnon to justice, what he describes as a "piece of neocon lunacy" left over from the Bush era.

"To listen to the ravings of the US military, you would think that Mr McKinnon is a threat to national security on a par with Osama bin Laden. Gary McKinnon is not and never has been any kind of threat to American security. He had only one reason for fossicking around in the databanks of Pentagon computers, and it had nothing to do with the war on terror or indeed the military capabilities of any country on earth."

Johnson then puts forward the reason. "McKinnon believes in UFOs, and he is one of the large number of people who think that there is a gigantic conspiracy to conceal their existence from the rest of us, and that this conspiracy is organised by the US government. I am not so brave as to claim that UFOs do not exist."

He adds: "It is brutal, mad and wrong even to consider sending this man to America for trial. He has been diagnosed as having Asperger's syndrome, for heaven's sake. It is time for Barack Obama to show the new leadership the world has been crying out for. It is time for the Commander-in-Chief to tell the US military to stop being so utterly wet, dry their eyes, and invest in some passwords that are slightly more difficult to crack."

McKinnon faces 10 years’ jail on each of seven counts of computer fraud and a $250,000 fine if he is ever extradited and found guilty. ·