Where’s the compassion?

+++++++++++++WHERE’S THE COMPASSION, ASKS LIBERTY DIRECTOR?+++++++++++++++++

Not a new story this, in fact, it’s been around for a while, but the mother of the asperger’s sufferer Gary McKinnon, was on the Andrew Marr show this morning, and spoke very eloquently about the lack of compassion the UK government had shown to her son’s condition, and she claimed the UK government were more worried about their relationship with America, than their own citizens.

You can well understand the anger that came about in Janis Sharpe’s words on the programme. Scot, McKinnon, hacked into Pentagon computer files, and then was diagnosed with Asperger’s in 2008, (a form of autism).The decision to allow extradition was announced on 27 November 2009. He’s on the verge of suicide, and they claim that if he is extradited to the US, he will surely kill himself.

In a letter to McKinnon’s attorney, dated 26 November the Home Office stated that, “The secretary of state is of the firm view that McKinnon’s extradition would not be incompatible with his [human] rights,” and that, “His extradition to the United States must proceed forthwith.” Following this, however, the attorney for McKinnon, Karen Todner, has stated that she would seek a judicial review of the Home Secretary’s decision. If this should fail a new appeal to the European Court of Human Rights would be the next step since that court was unaware of McKinnon’s Asperger’s syndrome when it first considered his case.

The director of the Human Rights group Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti, is spot on when she too appeared on the sofa with Marr this morning. Our extradition laws are rotten and unjust, she said. McKinnon should be punished in the United Kingdom, not in America. As she said, we are dealing with human beings here, not robots that should be shunted about the world. There should be a law of compassion.

On the Liberty site, she writes: “Liberty argues that where conduct constituting a crime occurs in the UK then a British court should be allowed to refuse extradition if it is in the interests of justice to do so. Liberty also holds that the requesting country should have to make out the case for extradition in a British court before the request is granted.”

McKinnon could face more than 50 years in a US Jail for hacking from his home in London.

So would you trust the UK government to make the right decision with your life? Not sure that I’d be able to…

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