The government has promised it will ensure the hacker facing extradition to the US would serve any prison sentence in the UK amid a deepening row over whether it has legal power to stop the transfer.
Harriet Harman, Labour’s deputy leader who is “minding the shop” in Downing Street this week, defended decision by ministers not to intervene in the case of Gary McKinnon, who has Asperger's syndrome. She said that it was an “important principle” that ministers should not make judgements about the criminal justice system.
But she also revealed that the British government had secured assurances from the US that if the extradition takes place, his health needs will be attended to. She also revealed the UK government would try and ensure that he serves his sentence in this country.
“If found guilty, we will seek for him to be sentenced to serve prison in this country,” she told the BBC’s Sunday AM.
Mr McKinnon’s mother, Janis Sharp, said this morning that the Home Secretary had exercised their discretionary powers to stop extraditions in the past. Jack Straw had stopped the extradition of General Pinochet, she said, as well as people involved in the IRA.
A letter has been sent to the US President signed by 40 British MPs asking him to step in and “bring this shameful episode to an end.”
Alan Johnson, the current Home Secretary, argued this morning that he could not stop the legal move. The Home Secretary can only prevent extradition when the person in question could be sentenced to death, where there is a chance they will be tried for other crimes or where they have been previously extradited to the UK from another country.
“If none of these circumstances apply — which is true of McKinnon’s case — then it’s black and white. It would be breaking the law for a home secretary not to order extradition.”
But Mrs Sharp says that Lord Carlile, the independent reviewer of terrorism, has told her that Mr Johnson could stop the extradition.
The Home Secretary wrote in the Sunday Times that the crimes he is accused of are “far from trivial”.
He points out that he is alleged of repeatedly hacking into US government computer networks, including 97 US military computers, deleting vital software and then copying encrypted information onto his own computer, shutting down the Washington computer network for 24 hours.
He also left a note on one army computer saying US foreign policy is akin to government-sponsored terrorism and threatening “disruption at the highest level.”
Mr Johnson writes: “Just as I would want to seek the speedy extradition of any US citizen whom police and prosecutors suspected of committing similar damage to the UK defence network, so the US government wants McKinnon to be extradited.
Mr McKinnon’s mother said that she was writing to President Obama to ask for clemency for her son and that she had faith that he would listen to her appeal.
The Conservatives say that if he has questions to answer, Mr McKinnon must answer questions in a British court and the case raises serious questions about the workings of the Extradition Act, which should be reviewed.
Mr Johnson responded that the legislation was necessary for the European arrest warning, without which it is “unlikely “ that Hussein Osman could have been speedily extradited from Italy from his involvement in failed terrorist attacks in July 2005. He also said that since it came into force, one one extradition request made by Britain has been refused by America.
Source:The times
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