Hacker is 'too Sick' to Survive Us Extradition

The Home Secretary has backed the extradition of a UFO-obsessed computer hacker, despite hearing expert argument that it would be in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Lawyers for 42-year-old Gary McKinnon from north London, who was arrested for hacking into US military computer systems to look for evidence of aliens, said his recent diagnosis with Asperger's syndrome would have profound implications for his mental health if he were put in a high-security US prison.

One of the world's leading experts on autism, Simon Baron-Cohen, professor of developmental psychopathology at Cambridge University, was commissioned, along with other experts, to assess McKinnon. The evidence was presented to the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, last month as McKinnon's legal team sought a judicial review of a House of Lords ruling approving McKinnon's extradition. But Smith has now rejected the assessment.

'We're upset and disappointed with the Home Secretary's decision, as she has clearly not given proper consideration to Gary being diagnosed with Asperger's,' said his mother, Janis.

According to a fresh legal challenge by McKinnon's team: 'There remains a real risk of the claimant being detained pre-trial and thereafter being imprisoned at a high-security institution, despite suffering from Asperger's syndrome, which would violate the prohibition on inhuman treatment protected by Article 3 of the Convention.'