The announcement on Tuesday 16th October by Theresa May, the Conservative / Liberal Democrat coalition government Home Secretary, that Gary McKinnon will not be extradited to the USA. This is a huge relief, and to be honest, a surprise, to some of us who have been campaigning for this for years.
We wish Gary and his family all the best.
Thank you to everyone who has supported this campaign over the years, by lobbying politicians and by airing the issues of cybersecurity, extradition law and the treatment of autistic people, with the mainstream media and online.
The Daily Mail newspaper has been (to many supposedly "liberal" minded people's astonishment) a staunch supporter of the campaign to stop Gary McKinnon being extradited to the USA.
Technically, the Director of Public Prosecutions, could continue to flounder in the mire of the Crown Prosecution Service's embarrassment, by reversing his previous arguments that there is insufficient evidence to prosecute Gary in the UK - the root cause of this whole debacle. It would be extraordinary if that were to happen now.
Theresa May has also vaguely promised some "new" forum bar changes to the evil Extradition Act 2003.
As with all politicians' promises, which we have learnt to be extremely cynical of over the course of this campaign, we need to see the full detail of exactly what is proposed. Will this really be something new, or will it be the Commencement of the already existing (but deliberately left dormant for over 6 years in defiance of the the will of Parliament) Extradition Act 2003 section 19B (European Arrest Warrant etc. category 1 countries) and section 87B (which applies to category 2 countries like the USA) ?
Until this mess over forum bar and Extradition is properly reformed, then the Kafkaesque political and judicial bureaucracy will betray other British victims of injustice, such as the student Richard O'Dwyer, who is facing extradition to the USA, for alleged internet activities which are not illegal in the United Kingdom.
Will anyone in Whitehall and Westminster be held accountable over the injust imprisonment without trial and extradition to the USA of, for example Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan ?
Blair wilkins
You have had a long and exhausting struggle and at long last you are free of the terrible threat hanging over your family. CONGRATULATIONS GARY and JANICE!
Welcome to a more 'normal life' adventure
We hope you will give us a book - outlining the progress of your case, your feelings and thoughts as the situation you were trapped in developed over the years.
A lot of us in the UFO field have experienced differing intensities of 'official interference' but you by your courage and intelligence reached so far into the forbidden, that your work attracted the worst attacks on individual freedom and free speech we had seen in a long time.
You guys know what the truth is -
And now thousands of others do too.
All we need to do now is point our YUKON RANGERS
at the sky and we can film these Visitors with the greatest of ease. Invisible to the eye, infra red picks them up a treat!
Keep up the good work, you are a glowing example to us all.
fg
UK prosecutors, cops ponder new probe into NASA hacker McKinnon
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/07/uk_mulls_re_opening_mckinnon_investigation/
[...]
May said UK prosecutors will review whether McKinnon, who lives in north London, can be tried in Britain. It is understood a meeting between the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and Met police officers regarding his case will take place at the end of November.
[...]
McKinnon was arrested in March 2002 by officers from the UK's since disbanded Hi-Tech Crime Unit. His case was put on hold until US extradition proceedings began in 2005. McKinnon's family and supporters fought a fierce and ultimately successful campaign against extradition. The campaigners argued that McKinnon ought to be tried in the UK.
Sharp told El Reg that UK prosecutors have consistently refused to take up the case, even when the McKinnon team offered CPS lawyers a signed confession.
"A UK trial is what we fought for ten years and is what the CPS refused us for ten years as they said they were unable to prosecute Gary as they didn’t have the evidence required," she explained.
"After a judicial review in June-July 2009 against the CPS in which we tried to force a UK prosecution to take place, Lord Justice Stanley Burnton agreed with the CPS that the CPS were wholly justified in refusing to prosecute Gary in the UK.
"It would therefore be a spectacular turnaround if the CPS suddenly decided they could prosecute after all."
[...]