Following the recent loss of British hacker Gary McKinnon's appeal against extradition to the US, it still looks like he might serve a prison sentence in the UK if found guilty.
McKinnon is accused of breaking into US military and NASA computers in 2001, claiming to be looking for classified information on UFOs held by the US Government.
Harriet Harman, Labour's Deputy Leader, told BBC's Sunday AM: "If the Americans have made out in court a case that this is an allegation of an offence of sufficient seriousness that they want him to stand trial in America, I don't think it should be for the British Government or any British politician to say we are going to second-guess the criminal justice system."
She added: "If he is found guilty, then obviously straight away we will seek for him to serve any prison sentence – if he is sentenced to prison – back in this country."
Harman added that that the Government had been assured by American authorities that McKinnon's health needs will be attended to should the extradition go ahead. McKinnon suffers from Asperger's syndrome.
Political hot potato
McKinnon's extradition has become a major political 'hot potato' in recent weeks, with Home Secretary Alan Johnson saying that it would be illegal for a government minister to now stop his extradition to the US.
Meanwhile, former Cabinet minister Peter Hain told the Daily Mail that he had considerable sympathy for the hacker, noting that: "After all he was sitting in his bedroom by his computer, as a kind of computer geek zapping the American defence system."
He added: "I have got a lot of sympathy for Gary McKinnon and his mum, who is a very brave woman fighting for his rights. He has got Asperger's syndrome which does tend to produce the kind of behaviour that is very compulsive."
Somewhat surprisingly, the Home Secretary Alan Johnson noted that McKinnon's "serious crimes" were allegedly carried out "shortly after the attacks of 9/11 which killed nearly 3,000 US citizens".
Janis Sharp, Mr McKinnon's mother, hit back saying she was "very disappointed because not only is he (Mr Johnson) trying not to stand up for Gary's rights, he actually is trying to incriminate him by talking about 9/11 and all the people that died and then mentioning Gary's name.
"I don't expect him to actually be doing America's job, I expect him to be standing up for British citizens."
More than 40 MPs have issued a direct plea to Barack Obama urging him to immediately stop the "shameful" extradition.
Your comments (3) Click to add a new comment
dextablue
August 4th
3. Has nobody watched "Catch me if you can" The Yanks are going to lock up Gary give him a computer and a list of servers they want infiltrating. Its just so obvious. We could use this guy in MI5.
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jpfife
August 3rd
2. There is only one word for the Home Secretary, Alan Johnson: *****.
The amount of appeasing the UK Government does is amazing. It would be illegal to stop the extradition? Dear God this man has no sense of anything; justice, protection of citizens by the state. He's obviously just a patsy doing what he's told by the Yanks.
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flymo
August 3rd
1. Well said, Adam. There has indeed been a disproportionate response to an (allegedly) trivial try-the-default-password hack, repeated many times. Of course, it has exposed the incompetence of the guardians of the systems in question, so of course they want blood.
That does not mean that our puny politicos should allow them to have it - these pollys should be working for us, not for incompetent foreign security goons.
My thanks to those generous US citizens who have spotted this and come out in favour of our harmless UFO-secret-seeker whose Aspergers is very likely involved in this UFO obsession.
As to the grossly inflated 'damage' alleged, who can seriously believe it? After all, they did knowingly let him continue for a very long time.
Let us hope that President Obama sees the damage that this is doing to the hugely improved reputation of the USA (since his accession to the Presidency) and takes the obvious step of allowing Gary McKinnon stand trial in the UK.
Keep up the good work!
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