UFO Hacker Gary McKinnon may foil US prosecutors

Autistic hacker Gary McKinnon will get another chance to beat his US extradition order next week when the UK Parliament's Home Affairs Select Committee considers his plight again.

The Committee will consider the case against the 2003 Extradition Act under which the US placed an order for McKinnon's arrest after he was caught hacking into military computers in 2001.

The Government began a review of UK extradition law in September after widespread complaints that people like McKinnon were being removed from their home country to face foreign prosecutors on the basis of flimsy evidence.

The committee will also consider the plight of those whose extraditions are still being processed despite the government's review.

The Home Office said in September that it would not freeze extraditions while it considered whether the process was unjust. It refused to freeze McKinnon's extradition despite his case having significant influence over its decision to review the Extradition Act.

This created the possibility that people would be extradited on conditions subsequently found unsound by the government's review.

McKinnon's extradition is, however, on hold while Teresa May, Home Secretary, considers the possibility that the poor state of his mental health may be cause to prevent his removal. The Home Secretary has taken an unprecedentedly long time over the matter since she agreed to consider it in May.

McKinnon's extradition has also been undermined by accusations that the US charges against the hacker were trumped up, by the possibility that he might be tried in the UK for a crime he committed using a computer in his girlfriend's flat in North London in 2001, and by his Asperger's Syndrome, an autistic condition characterised by social vulnerability that has created a strong medical and moral case for a UK trial. ...

via Hacker gets another chance to foil US prosecutors | THINQ.co.uk.