Infosecurity Adviser blogger asks CPS to 'take one for the team' in Gary McKinnon case
London UK, August 2009 (Infosecurity PR) - Neil Stinchcombe, a blogger for Infosecurity Adviser, has asked the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) - which approved the US extradition request for self-confessed UFO hacker Gary McKinnon - to revisit the case following the failure in the latest, and final stage of, Gary's legal appeal process.
In a comment on the case on the Infosecurity Adviser Web site, Stinchcombe says that Gary is "just a pawn in a political and legal game between the UK and the US," adding that the original gameplan was for the CPS to revisit its original approval the US government's extradition request.
"However, as Alan Johnson, the current Home Secretary, said when writing in the Sunday Times a few days after Gary's latest appeal through the courts stated: `It would be unlawful for the home secretary to intervene'."
Despite this, Stinchcombe says that the medical condition that Gary suffers from, coupled with the fact that the current US/UK extradition treaty is clearly biased against UK citizens, makes the US extradition request wholly unfair.
"As a result of these highly extenuating circumstances, I am now asking for the CPS to `take one for the team' and admit that its original approval on the extradition case was inappropriate," he said.
"Gary has become a pawn in a much bigger game," he explained, adding that if the CPS revisits its analysis of the case, then the UK government can quite honourably rescind the application and he can be tried as a UK citizen in a UK court," he added.
Stinchcombe and his colleagues on the Insecurity Adviser are so incensed by the UK government's insensitivity in the case that they are conducting a poll on the site - http://www.infosec.co.uk/gary - which asks visitors whether they think the CPS should declare its original assessment of the extradition request invalid.
"The reason for this is quite simple - we don't think that the CPS took all the relevant conditions in account when evaluating the US request," he said.
For more on Neil Stinchcombe's endgame analysis - and poll - on the Gary McKinnon case, see http://www.infosecurityadviser.com/view_message?id=136
Infosecurity Adviser is a unique community portal representing the information security industry and it's users, organized in association with Infosecurity Europe. It offers advice from industry experts and bloggers as well as end user product reviews. It also contains information on qualifications, career paths and jobs from all the major accreditation bodies and is supported by the Information Security Awareness Forum. For more information see http://www.infosecurityadviser.com
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