By Caroline McClatchey
BBC News
British computer hacker Gary McKinnon’s fight against extradition to the US has drawn support from a large and diverse range of influential people. How did his case become such a cause celebre
It has to be one of the most unlikely partnerships in the history of popular music – one is a toned and tanned young boy band singer, the other a brooding and balding lead guitarist from one of the rock giants of the 1970s.
But it’s not music that has brought Boyzone’s Keith Duffy and Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour together – it’s the case of computer hacker Gary McKinnon.
Mr McKinnon has become Britain’s best-known conspiracy theorist, or, as London Mayor Boris Johnson put it – he’s a "classic British nut job" who believes in "little green men".
The American authorities see it differently. The 43-year-old is a wanted man in the US, where he has been accused of "the biggest military computer hack of all time". For the past five years he has been fighting an extradition request from the American authorities which want to try him on US soil.
If convicted there he faces up to 60 years in prison.
Along the way he has amassed a legion of supporters, as diverse in their make up as they are distinguished in their own fields of achievement. They include novelist Nick Hornby, film critic Barry Norman, Emma Noble, the ex-glamour model and former daughter-in-law of John Major, Sting, his film producer wife Trudie Styler and actress Julie Christie.
Politicians of all hues have also leapt on Mr McKinnon’s case. And pop stars Chrissie Hynde and Sir Bob Geldof have teamed up with Gilmour to record a song of support.
In the past six weeks his cause has been further bolstered by a high-profile campaign in the Daily Mail newspaper.
But how did Mr McKinnon’s fight become such a rallying cause for this disparate group of supporters
Mr McKinnon does not deny he hacked into Pentagon systems, but claims he was searching for evidence of a UFO cover-up. His story started back in 2002 and the media have, periodically, followed the twists and turns of his legal battles (see graph, below).
There was also a spike in coverage when he was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome – a form of autism – last year, but the campaign to stop his extradition has gathered pace, passion and people in the last six months.
While a PR agency has taken on much of the co-ordination, Mr McKinnon’s campaign has won support for a variety of reasons.
Author Nick Hornby and Keith Duffy are thought to have taken an interest because they have children with autism. For others, it raises serious questions about freedom and rights.
Question of justice
Former Beirut hostage Terry Waite learned of the campaign from friends.
"[Mr McKinnon's] a young man who’s vulnerable, who may well have breached the law but in this case, the law has to be exercised with common sense and compassion."
"Bell Yard will continue to draw attention to the absurdities of the Extradition Act 2003 [believing] the UK should not be subcontracting its criminal justice system to foreign jurisdictions for reasons of convenience or political expediency"
McKinnon’s PR agency Bell Page
Profile: Gary McKinnon
He is one of many supporters concerned about what he called the "inadequate and unfair" extradition treaty between the UK and the US.
As it stands, the UK requires the US to show only "reasonable suspicion" to secure the extradition of a British citizen. But the US asks for "probable cause" from the UK.
Mark Kelly, keyboard player with British rock group Marillion, became interested in the story a couple of years ago. He shares, with Mr McKinnon, a love of computers.
"It was one of those stories that caught my eye. I have always had a fascination with computers and I can see how he got caught up in looking for evidence of UFOs and with his Asperger’s, it probably became a bit of an obsession."
But when Kelly put a petition on the band’s website it irritated many American fans – an indication of how opinion about the case is divided.
While most of the celebrities seem to have come on board of their own accords, author Jilly Cooper admits to the BBC she supports the case "in principle" but knows little about it. She says she was contacted by a newspaper "early in the morning".
‘Soap opera’
There is no doubt the Mr McKinnon camp received a major boost when the Daily Mail made the campaign its own about six weeks ago.
The paper declared the case was an "affront to British justice" and "in the name of both sanity and compassion" urged Home Secretary Alan Johnson to "think again". Since then it has included updates almost every day..
Public relations consultant Mark Borkowski believes the Mail’s backing has been crucial, calling it the "oxygen" the campaign needed. And the timing was right, as the "modern day soap opera" reaches its finale.
"It changed from the geek in his bedroom to the great American military machine trying to remove this person from the bosom of his mother."
And while the story appeals to mothers in Middle England, the Mail’s readership base, it also reaches out to the future online audience, he says. But for Max Clifford, a fellow PR expert, the paper’s motivation has been chiefly political, another "stick for the Daily Mail to beat the government".
And it’s no surprise to discover there is some PR professionalism at the heart of the campaign. London-based PR agency Bell Yard is working "pro bono" (free) for the McKinnon campaign. It has experience in this field, having represented the "NatWest 3" – three British bankers who were eventually extradited to the US on fraud related charged. The agency was unavailable for comment for this story.
In the know
Mr McKinnon’s mother, Janis Sharp, is also a key player in the campaign. She says her son’s case is another example of how the government is failing to protect its own. A musician and author, Ms Sharp is so well versed in the extradition laws she sounds like a lawyer
She has been plugging away for years – never turning down an interview, responding to all e-mails and now tweeting about her son’s dilemma on Twitter. And she hasn’t passed up on the benefits of old style networking – which helps explain how the pop star support got rolling.
Ms Sharp is friends with David Gilmour’s brother-in-law. She re-wrote the lyrics of folk classic Chicago, which Gilmour, Sir Bob Geldof and Chrissie Hynde put their voices to – it was the campaign’s first plea to US President Barack Obama.
Gilmour then spread the world to Sting and Styler.
Ms Sharp said the couple have been a huge support and she is constantly amazed by what people have done for the family.
"I am really shy and find it incredibly hard to deal with the media attention but I have to make sure Gary stays here.
"So many good things have happened but the worry is always there."
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Extradition without justice
Gary McKinnon’s fight to face trial in the UK casts a stark light on our unfair international extradition agreements
Gary McKinnon’s fight to be prosecuted in the UK casts a stark light on our extradition arrangements with America. US prosecutors are threatening him with up to 70 years in a “supermax” prison – and this a man with Asperger’s syndrome who could hardly be less suited to such punishment.
But Britain’s extradition arrangements beyond those with the Americans make for equally unhappy reading. The Extradition Act was passed in the aftermath of September 11 and much of its focus is on fast-track extradition of terror suspects. But as with other aspects of the “war on terror“, the net result is damage to long-held principles of fairness and justice. Extradition arrangements are important. They ensure fugitives from justice do not escape prosecution for their crimes – and indeed this is required under human rights law. But it is vital that safeguards are in place.
Liberty believes, as did the UK parliament for many years, that no one should be extradited unless and until the requesting country makes out a basic case against them in a UK court. Failure on this front can result in an innocent person being sent halfway across the world – away from family, supporters and legal advisers – to face unsound, trumped-up or politically motivated charges, to say nothing of probable pre-trial imprisonment. This can and does happen under the European arrest warrant.
Even more worryingly, the home secretary has made orders dispensing with the requirement of a prima facie case in respect of over 20 other countries outside the European Union, including Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, the Russian Federation and Turkey. Not only that, the European arrest warrant system, endorsed by parliament in the Extradition Act 2003, allows a person to be extradited to an EU country for something that may not be an offence in the UK provided the conduct fits within a broad list of 32 offences. While at first blush there seems no problem with extraditing someone for “murder”, we might think differently if another country’s laws define murder as including abortion.
Fast-track extradition is also provided for if the alleged offence is one of “racism or xenophobia”, however this is defined by the requesting country. Many EU countries criminalise speech offences to an extent that the UK – with its history of a robust approach to freedom of expression – does not. Yet a UK court cannot bar extradition on the basis that it is not a crime recognised by UK law.
More and more cases are appearing of unfair extradition practices that demonstrate the very real problems with the current system. This is why Liberty has a new campaign, Extradition Watch, to fight the unfairness of the current system. Fast-track extradition purely on the basis of administrative convenience and efficiency is justice denied. There are very good historical reasons why extradition safeguards were developed and recent cases like those of McKinnon and Andrew Symeou (a young Briton who faces extradition to Greece on extremely flimsy evidence) show why these safeguards should still form part of UK law. Liberty and others propose amending UK extradition arrangements to reinstate these traditional safeguards.
We are yet to learn what the courts will decide in respect of McKinnon’s last-ditch appeals. But it is certain that any legislative reforms will be too late to apply to his case. If this tragic case indicates the direction of travel for UK extradition law, we ignore the warning at our peril.