He has the backing of politicians across the spectrum, and celebrities flock to his cause. Pink Floyd's Dave Gilmour, Sir Bob Geldof and Chrissie Hynde are even recording a charity record for him. But last Friday, self-avowed "bumbling computer nerd" Gary McKinnon moved one step closer to being extradited to the US. The High Court ruled that he could not be tried in Britain for what America alleges was "the biggest military computer hack of all time". He faces up to 60 years in a maximum-security jail if convicted.
But this wasn't the work of a terrorist, says Boris Johnson in The Daily Telegraph. McKinnon, 43, who admits to hacking into 97 US military computers seven years ago, was "simply following up a weird intuition that UFOs exist, with all the compulsiveness that he has exhibited since he was a child". Diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, the Glasgow-born hacker is just "a classic British nutjob, who passionately believes something that is irrational... he is a prime candidate for the protection of the Government".
That seems even more the case when you consider that he is being tried under the 2003 US-UK extradition treaty, which was meant to tackle the threat posed by al-Qaeda, says Anthony Painter on The Huffington Post. "Now it is being used to extradite a frightened and disabled man."
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But "this is not simply an emotional argument", argues David Rawcliffe on the Adam Smith Institute blog. "It is a legal debate." Do McKinnon's supporters really believe the High Court should "have put public pressure and personal pity before the honest interpretation of the law?"
Johnson and other supporters of McKinnon can say all they want, but "if the law is to mean anything, it must remain the preserve of the judiciary, and, paradoxically, it must be followed by the courts even when it seems unjust". This "was not some harmless incident", as one military officer at the US Pentagon tells The Sunday Telegraph. "He did very serious and deliberate damage to military and Nasa computers," causing $700,000 worth of damage.
But there's a bigger issue here: the "lopsided" extradition treaty that makes it "much easier for British citizens to be sent to the US than for Americans to be brought here", says the Daily Mail. As it stands, the UK requires that the US show only "reasonable suspicion" to extradite a British citizen. So no firm evidence need be supplied. But the US asks for "probable cause" from the UK, which carries a greater burden of proof.
There are serious questions about how the process operates, say Sophie Kemp and Jill Lorimer, extradition experts at law firm Kingsley Napley in The Independent. Government figures released by the Liberal Democrats show that suspects in the US are 20% less likely to be extradited than those living in Britain.
You can feel sympathy for McKinnon and the US authorities, who "are doing what they think is right". The real villain in this case is "our own Home Office", says David Hughes on his Daily Telegraph blog. Home Secretary Alan Johnson protested in The Times that he is powerless to intervene. But this hand-washing "would have done justice to Pontius Pilate," says the Daily Mail. The Home Secretary can intervene on humanitarian grounds. As an Asperger's sufferer, McKinnon's "health, sanity and possibly life" are at stake if he is locked up in the US. "What more humanitarian grounds could Mr Johnson need?"
