Mother 'welcomes' hacker support
Updated on 03 August 2009
The mother of computer hacker Gary McKinnon has welcomed support from cabinet minister Peter Hain after he suggested her son should be tried in Britain.
The Welsh Secretary said it would be better for Mr McKinnon, who suffers from Asperger's Syndrome (AS), to be "assessed in a British context."
Mr McKinnon, 43, from Wood Green, north London, is wanted for trial on charges of hacking into US military networks.
Mr Hain told the Daily Mail: "I would have preferred it if I had been in the position to have a say on this - and the law is just following its course - to have had the Director of Public Prosecutions (Keir Starmer) make this decision.
"We could then have had a position where it could have been assessed in a British context - after all, he was sitting in his bedroom by a computer, as a kind of computer geek zapping the American defence system and therefore he was committing an offence on British soil."
Mr McKinnon's mother, Janis Sharp, told GMTV: "I was so upset when the Home Secretary spoke about 9/11, spoke about the people who died and mentioned Gary's name. It was almost like he was trying to incriminate him in some way, it's like some sort of smear campaign against a guy with Asperger's. It's ridiculous. So for Peter Hain to stand up and talk from the heart was so refreshing."
Writing for the Daily Telegraph, Mayor of London Boris Johnson said the British authorities' refusal to stop Mr McKinnon's removal would count as "one of the most protoplasmic acts of self-abasement since Suez" and that Mr McKinnon was a "classic British nutjob" who should be protected by the Government rather than being "catapulted" across the Atlantic.
In a statement, the Home Secretary said Friday's High Court ruling, in which Mr McKinnon failed in his bid to avoid extradition to America, said: "it would be illegal for me to stop the extradition".
Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman, who is standing in for Gordon Brown during the Prime Minister's absence on holiday, told BBC1's Andrew Marr Show: "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.
"To that extent the Home Secretary, in terms of his welfare, is involved. But we don't think it is right for the Home Secretary to say, 'We think this person should be extradited but this other person shouldn't be put on trial'."
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