14 DAY TRIAL // British hacker Gary McKinnon gets yet another chance of avoiding extradition to the United States. High Court judges have granted him a judicial extradition review, regardless of whether charges against the NASA hacker will be pressed in the UK or not.
The High Court ruling was made by Lord Justice Maurice Kay, who considered McKinnon's medical condition. The hacker was diagnosed in 2008 with Asperger's Syndrome (AS), a disorder in the autism spectrum, by Professor Simon Baron Cohen from the Cambridge University.
Armed with this diagnosis and being backed up by the National Autistic Society in UK, McKinnon's lawyers made an appeal against the extradition decision in the House of Lords last year, but lost. Home Office Secretary Jacqui Smith also turned down the appeal and all seemed lost for Gary.
However, his lawyers proved as resourceful as ever and found a way out in the form of a confession and the proposal of a guilty plea, if the Londoner was to be prosecuted in the UK. Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer is expected to announce his decision regarding this proposal in about two weeks. If he decides to press charges against McKinnon in the UK, the extradition proceedings will end.
Now that the judicial review has been granted, even if Starmer decides not to pursue prosecution under UK's Computer Misuse Act, the hacker has even more chances of tackling extradition. If charges are not pressed in the UK, the decision to extradite him will be reviewed by the High Court sometime in March.
Kaim Todner, one of McKinnon's lawyers, has welcomed the Court's decision, considering it a step in the right direction. "We are overjoyed that the British courts have shown sense and compassion by allowing our son Gary, a young man with Asperger's syndrome, this judicial review. We have always been outraged by the Home Office's decision to allow him to be extradited to stand trail in a foreign land where he would face an out of proportion sentence for what's essentially a crime of eccentricity," Janis Sharp, Gary's mother, commented, according to The Register.
The U.S. authorities hold Gary McKinnon responsible for hacking into 97 computer systems, belonging to the military and various government agencies, between 2001 and 2002, and have referred to this as being "the biggest military hack of all times." If trialled in U.S., the hacker risks a sentence of up to 70 years in a maximum security prison. Professor Simon Baron Cohen, expert in psychopathology, claims that such a harsh sentence will have a severe impact on McKinnon's already problematic mental health condition. According to him, the 42-year-old Englishman is prone to depression and anxiety attacks.