Clegg ‘Can’t Stop’ McKinnon Extradition After All
Deputy prime minister Nick Clegg has said it may be beyond the power of the new UK government to prevent the extradition of NASA hacker McKinnon
Gary McKinnon’s hopes of a last-minute reprieve from extradition to the US for cyber crimes have been dealt a blow by deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, who says he may not be able to intervene.
A judicial review of the case was due this week, but incoming home secretary Theresa May applied to have it delayed. However, Liberal Democrat leader Clegg said it may be beyond the powers of this new government to reverse the decision of the former Labour home secretary, Alan Johnson, not to block the computer hacker’s extradition to the US.
He told the BBC in an interview yesterday that neither he nor May had the power to “completely reverse and undo certain legal aspects” of what was a “legally very complex” case.
Limited powers of intervention
Both the Lib Dems and Conservatives had backed McKinnon’s numerous appeals to the ever more senior UK courts to block his extradition for hacking into 97 military and NASA systems in a bid to find secret information about aliens and UFOs in 2001 and 2002.
McKinnon is facing up to 60 years in jail in the US, after it was alleged that his hacking caused it to shut down critical systems and networks in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, and caused damages of approximately £435,000. One US prosecutor once described his actions as the “biggest military computer hack of all time”.
The judicial review was granted in January and was due to investigate whether Johnson was right to decide in November to allow McKinnon’s extradition, despite evidence that he suffered from Asperger’s Syndrome.
Legal experts, however, have said that the circumstances where the secretary of state can intervene in an extradition included a threat to national security or of the death penalty in the extraditing country. The Extradition Act does not extend to allow for extradition challenges on humanitarian grounds alone, including the risk of suicide.
But the new government had previously said it will re-examine the extradition treaty between the US and the UK.
