Gary McKinnon SHOULD be extradited

No one else is going to say this, so it comes down to the greatness of B&D.

There is a totally bullshit campaign doing the rounds, led by the Mail but including pretty much every rag out there, that poor Gary McKinnon shouldn't be sent off to America. Oh woe, poor fucking Gary.

He is just a poor lad (aged 43) that got a bit caught up in looking for little green men one day and, all of a sudden like, hacked into the United States' secure network. Whoops!

Sorry, but he just didn't.

First off, let's just clarify here what this guy did. Between 2001 and 2002 (keep in mind those dates, you may remember the sightly heightened state of panic America was going through at the time) Gary from North London hacked into 97 NASA and Pentagon computers. Ninety-seven. Not one, nearly a hundred. Over a sustained period. That is known as systemic hacking to anyone who cares to look at the facts of the matter.

The crime was described by the US as:

He deleted critical files from operating systems, which shut down the US Army’s Military District of Washington network of 2,000 computers for 24 hours, as well as deleting US Navy Weapons logs, rendering a naval base's network of 300 computers inoperable after the September 11th terrorist attacks. They claim the cost of tracking and correcting the problems he caused was $700,000.

Ah, bless him. You may think that this is possibly slightly over-egged, and it maybe is. But this is a quote the Mail will ever publish, posted by McKinnon himself on a site during the attacks:

US foreign policy is akin to government-sponsored terrorism these days? It was not a mistake that there was a huge security stand-down on September 11 last year...I am SOLO. I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels.

Kind of harms the guy's defence that he was innocently blundering through for UFOs, using the propaganda of living with his Mummy to suggest it was all in his bedroom. If you aren't aware, the guy works as a systems administrator.

All this is ignored by his supporters. They will pull out the corker in their hatbox and remind you that he has Aspergers. Or as the Mail and others prefer to refer to it as, autism, mainly because it makes it sound like he spends all day drawing perfect charcoals of Tower Bridge. This isn't helped by him no longer giving any interviews.

Aspergers? Hmmm, really? As I said McKinnon is 43. Guess when he was 'diagnosed'? Yup, last year. Which coincided very nicely with his appeal hearing. His diagnosis was made in August 2008 by Professor Simon Baron-Cohen. Not when he was 10, or as a teenager, not even shortly after being charged with hacking. In fact, not even when America sought extradition. No he was diagnosed a full two years after America declared they wanted him. I'm not a doubter of the autistic spectrum, but there is no doubt that it also goes to quite a large area.

Sorry, not an excuse in any case and certainly not so late in the day.

All of this just smacks of desperation not to be prosecuted, as does the relentless campaigning by his mother and various musicians.

So he is guilty as sin. What about the morality of the treaty? Well it is one sided there is no doubt, but let's put a couple of spins on this.

First off scenario one. Gary McKinnon is in fact being sought by America because for two years he has groomed children and had them him send naked pictures of themselves. Would anyone at all, let alone the Mail, disagree with his extradition? No.

Okay, number two. Gary McKinnon has a Aspergers but is also Muslim. During a period, 2001-2002, of intense security following Islamist terrorist campaigns resulting in 9/11, Gary hacked into NASA, the USAF, the US Army and the US Navy and deleted a series of files and declared openly that this was only the beginning. Anyone have a problem with the extradition? No.

Last one, number three. The hacking was actually committed by a man known as Omar from Cairo who hacked into GCHQ and the MoD systems and accessed top secret files. His extradition from Egypt to the UK is being held up because his Mum claims he has a form of autism. How would people, more so the Mail, feel about that? Hang him from a tree would be the call.

The British court system, and the state itself, have a duty to protect our citizens from foreign powers, but in return our citizens have a duty not to commit massive criminal acts against those foreign powers.

Gary McKinnon knew exactly what he was doing, did so for a long period of time and openly declared the fact. When he was caught, he pleaded innocence and started a publicity campaign. When the United States requested his extradition in 2006, he upped this to a crescendo and two years later declaredhe had Aspergers and as such a mental illness that he could not possibly stand trail in America. Even now we have claims that he has been diagnosed as having a compulsion to kill himself if he is sent there.

Claims of Camp X-ray, of 70 year prison terms, even the death penalty have been put forward by his family and his legal team, whereas the reality is that he is likely to be sent down for a year and then given a job.

Gary McKinnon is not going to prison for 70 years. Going to Guantanamo is simply not on the cards. He is however, up to his neck in guilt and in any other situation it would be straight forward. The fact America is involved, that a slightly one sided treaty was signed and that he then 'discovered' he had Aspergers has completely clouded the fact that this man committed, knowingly and over a long period of time, a serious criminal act upon a sovereign nation.

It makes me very cynical, in fact I await the book launch in the coming years. Let America have him and if he is oh so inncent then he can prove it in a court of law in fornt of the people he did it to.