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Gary McKinnon (Extradition)

I do not propose to ask the Home Secretary to use any general discretion that he says he does not have, nor today do I wish to highlight the unfairness of the UK-US extradition treaty. I want him to focus on the medical evidence, which he has considered and not disputed, and the limited human rights discretion that he accepts he has. Does the Home Secretary not accept that Professor Jeremy Turk's report of 8 October raised new and material evidence, namely that Gary McKinnon""is now suffering from an exacerbation of his very serious Major Depressive Disorder…aggravated and complicated by anxiety and panic attacks"" aligned to his having Asperger's syndrome? Given that he now places Gary McKinnon at an""even higher risk of self-harm and suicide"" than after his earlier report, and concludes that""suicide is now a real probability and will be an almost certain inevitability should he experience extradition"," and that there is a high probability that he""will require inpatient psychiatric containment"," surely he has established a real risk of human rights being breached should extradition proceed. Putting it more bluntly, how ill and vulnerable does Gary McKinnon need to be not to be extradited to the United States? The Home Secretary wants to rely on previous court judgments. Given that Lord Justice Stanley Burnton indicated that if Gary McKinnon were not extradited he could be prosecuted in this country, how can it be proportionate to allow the extradition of a UK citizen who is suicidal and sectionable? Is it not the case that far from being powerless to stop Gary McKinnon's extradition, in the light of the medical evidence the Home Secretary has shown himself and his Government to be spineless?