The British computer hacker Gary McKinnon failed on Saturday in his last-ditch attempt to avoid extradition to the US where he could face a sentence of up to 60 years in a high-security prison.
The high court upheld a refusal by Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, to sanction a trial of the 43-year-old ”UFO eccentric” in Britain.
Alan Johnson, the home secretary, is unlikely to halt the extradition. He has said a thorough assessment was carried out to ensure that the necessary extradition criteria were met.
A few hours before the ruling, McKinnon’s mother, Janis Sharp, who has led a high-profile campaign to save her son from extradition, told BBC Radio 4’s Today: ”We are fighting for Gary’s life. If you are talking about a 60-year sentence, if he did 30 years I would never see him again because I would be dead. I’m obsessed with saving Gary because I’m his mother.”
McKinnon has admitted hacking into the computer systems of the US defence department and Nasa, but his supporters argued his obsessions led to his misguided hacking activities from his flat in Wood Green, north London, and that he should be tried in Britain.
The Free Gary campaign has won the support of more than 100 MPs and received vociferous backing from the Daily Mail and celebrities as diverse as Bob Geldof, Chrissie Hynde, Barry Norman, Jilly Cooper and Julie Christie.
The government’s independent reviewer of anti-terrorist legislation, Lord Carlile, intervened to say that prosecuting McKinnon in the US would be ”cruel and unconscionable” because of his medical condition.
Gordon Brown’s wife, Sarah, met McKinnon’s mother to express her concern, while the prime minister last week said: ”Anybody who looks at this must be sympathetic to someone who suffers from Asperger’s syndrome.”
McKinnon admitted hacking into 97 computers, leaving a message in US military systems saying: ”I will continue to disrupt.”
The US government said repairs cost $700 000 and the Crown Prosecution Service said his hacking activities were not random experiments in hacking but a deliberate effort to breach US defence systems in 2001 and 2002.
McKinnon challenged the decision by Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecution, not to put him on trial in Britain. The hacker argued that extradition would have disastrous consequences, including possible psychosis and suicide because of his autistic spectrum medical condition.
McKinnon has spoken about his fears, saying that he wakes every morning ”feeling as though someone has taken a sledgehammer to my chest during the night”.
His lawyers argue that extradition arrangements between Britain and the US are imbalanced.
Figures released this week to the Liberal Democrats in response to parliamentary questions reveal Britain has extradited twice as many criminal suspects to the US as those who have gone the other way.
Suspects in the US are 20% less likely to be extradited than those living in Britain. Critics say this indicates Britons have ”second-class status” when it comes to being sent for trial in the US. – guardian.co.uk