Protestors challenge McKinnon extradition
By Jon Ashford
Protestors against Gary McKinnon’s extradition demonstrated in Grosvenor Square today, just metres from the US embassy.
Among the attendees at the demonstration, organised by civil liberties campaigners Liberty, were Janis Sharp and Lucy Clarke, Mr Mckinnon’s mother and partner respectively.
They gave numerous interviews to the press and posed with protestors, who held paper aeroplanes made from pamphlets, detailing Mr McKinnon’s situation.
Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti, in a typically impassioned statement, criticised the government for making a ‘clear mistake’.
“This problem starts at home,” she told politics.co.uk.
“The US government continues to guarantee for its own citizens the right not to be parcelled off to other countries, to face trial without a case shown in a local court.
She described the impending extradition as a punishment in itself.
“You’ve got to understand that being taken from your home, your family, your lawyers and your friends and supporters, taken off to the other side of the world, to a place where you will be a stranger, where you will be a fugitive offender, where you will be locked up pending trial – that’s a punishment in itself.”
Ms Chakrabarti insisted nobody should be forced to go anywhere without a trial in a local court. She added: “Where the interests of justice mean that somebody should be tried here at home, that’s what should happen.”
Many have cited Mr McKinnon’s diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome as a reason to grant him immunity from extradition.
If an appeal by his lawyers is unsuccessful, Mr McKinnon could face up to 70 years in jail for hacking into the Pentagon and Nasa, which according to US government sources caused $700,000 (£430,000) worth of damage.
