Computer hacker Gary McKinnon has been refused permission to appeal to the UK Supreme Court against his extradition to the US. The High Court ruled the case was not of "general public importance" to go to the UK's highest court.
Mr McKinnon is accused of breaking into the US's military computer system. Mr McKinnon, who has Asperger's syndrome, insists he was just seeking evidence of UFOs... Mr McKinnon faces 60 years in prison if convicted in the US. His lawyers have said they may now take the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. They argue that extradition of their client would have "disastrous consequences" for his health, including possible psychosis and suicide.
Mr McKinnon had challenged the refusal of Keir Starmer QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions, to put him on trial in the UK on charges of computer misuse - which would have allowed him to avoid extradition. Giving the court's decision on Friday, Lord Justice Stanley Burnton, who heard Mr McKinnon's latest appeal earlier this year, said extradition was "a lawful and proportionate response" to his alleged offending...
Reacting after the latest ruling, his mother Janis Sharp said no other country would offer its citizens to the US so readily "as sacrificial lambs" just to safeguard the special political relationship. She said: "To use my desperately vulnerable son in this way is despicable, immoral and devoid of humanity."
Mr McKinnon's solicitor, Karen Todner, said... "Why is our government so inhumane as to allow this to happen to someone, particularly someone with Aspergers, a form of autism? This is the wholesale destruction and bullying of a small individual by the United States and now our own government. Our extradition treaty with the US is unfair and prejudicial to UK citizens and should be repealed or amended immediately."
Sabina Frediani, campaigns co-ordinator for Liberty, which supported Mr McKinnon's case, said: "Never were justice and the law so out of sync as in the case of Britain's rotten extradition arrangements."
The Tories also criticised the UK's extradition arrangements with the US. Backbench MP David Davis said: "The reason this decision has been arrived at is because the British government created a set of laws and agreements which, masquerading as anti-terror laws, actually disadvantaged a whole range of British citizens. This is why the courts find themselves having to dispatch this young man to America, when he should face a proper trial in British courts. It is long past time that this travesty of justice was put right."
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