Gary McKinnon: Hope At Last

At last the government has taken the long overdue step of putting on hold, albeit temporarily, the ridiculous, unjust attempt to extradite British citizen, Gary McKinnon. Mr McKinnon suffers from Asperger’s syndrome and stands accused of hacking into US military computers on several occasions. The US government claims he has caused damage totalling hundreds of thousands of dollars. Mr McKinnon claims that he was looking for evidence of UFO’s. The charge against Mr McKinnon isn’t the issue however, the judicial process (or lack of) is. Under the terms of the UK-US Extradition Treaty the US can demand that Mr McKinnon is flown to the United States and surrendered to US authorities with hardly any evidence being presented to his home government.

Strangely for a treaty, this ability has not been reciprocated by the US authorities, so we have the situation that our citizens can be extradited to the US but not the other way round, a patently absurd arrangement that was signed into law in secret by the Labour government creating yet another assault on our civil liberties. We hope that the Home Secretary, Theresa May which has put the extradition on hold sees sense and quashes the extradition altogether. We also call for the ending of this ridiculous treaty. No British citizen should be subject to such a one-sided arrangement