The Cruelty of Britain's Extradition Policy

When the history of Anglo-American relations is written, the few years after September 11th will be remembered for Tony Blair assuring George Bush that Britain stood 'shoulder to shoulder' with America. With the smoking debris of the twin towers relatively fresh in the memory, there were dark murmurings about organised terrorist groups seeking nuclear material in Pakistan and sub-Saharan Africa. Colin Powell solemnly assured the UN that the United States had evidence that Saddam Hussein posed a threat. Intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic uncovered thousands of terrorist plots.

In this dark and tense atmosphere, to stay as close to America as possible, Britain signed a new extradition treaty with the US which gave more protection to Americans than to Brits. Passing into law as the Extradition Act 2003, it made it easier for America to extradite British suspects than it was for Britain to extradite American ones. As things stand today, if Britain accuses an American of plotting a terrorist attack against London, the US government will only allow him on a plane to face justice if Britain shows that it has enough evidence to mount a good case against him. But if America accuses a Brit of plotting an identical attack against New York, Britain must put him on a plane to the States without so much as asking America to show that it has a good case at all. It is a lopsided legally-sanctioned double standard, and previous ministers have admitted as much.

The newest victim of this travesty-of-justice waiting to happen 43-year-old hacker Gary McKinnon. McKinnon suffers from Aspergers syndrome, which means that he both exhibits obsessive behaviour and finds it very difficult to deal with big changes in his surroundings. Gary has said that he made it his personal mission to hack into American government computer systems in 2001 and 2002 to look for evidence of UFOs. "I found out that the US military uses Windows," he said, "and having realised this, I assumed it would probably be an easy hack if they hadn't secured it properly." He became so obsessed that he could think of little else. He was eventually caught when he miscalculated the time difference, and started controlling a computer while an operator was sitting in front of it.

This was not what parliament had in mind when it signed the Extradition Act. But, unmoved, the American government has claimed that McKinnon was "staging a very serious attack on US computer systems" and that he has caused hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damage. They want to extradite him. They have offered minimal evidence to back up their claim that he caused enough damage to even qualify for extradition, and because of the lopsided treaty, they don't have to. As an Aspergers sufferer, McKinnon was driven to collect information. American Law lecturer, former criminal defence attorney and former Member of the Texas Criminal Justice Advisory Committee on Offenders with Medical and Mental Impairments, Joseph Richard Gutheinz Jr., has argued that McKinnon is unlikely to get a fair trial in the US because "the American judicial system turns a blind eye to the needs of the mentally ill". Given that in the US he is likely to be tried in a military tribunal — the same tribunals used for inmates of Guantanamo Bay — he is doubly unlikely to get a fair trial.

McKinnon has received a lot of support. His cause was even supported by eighty-two MPs who signed an Early Day Motion supporting his fight against the extradition. But when another parliamentary motion which could have helped him by calling for an immediate review of the one-sided treaty was introduced, almost all the MPs changed their minds and abandoned McKinnon. The reason? The motion was introduced by the Tories, and many Labour MPs put politics above justice.

McKinnon's only hope now lies with the home secretary. He could easily write to the director of public prosecutions and argue that because McKinnon committed his crimes in the Britain, he should be tried in Britain. That is what has happened with similar cases in the past.

This sorry saga has not reflected well on anyone, and that would be the right way to solve it.

Azeem Ibrahim is a research scholar at the International Security Program, Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a world fellow at Yale University.