Judge greenlights extradition of 'Pentagon hacker'

District Judge Evans has given the go ahead for the extradition of alleged Pentagon hacker Gary McKinnon to the United States.

The Judge said he was satisfied that the extradition would be compatible with McKinnon’s convention rights. The case will now be considered by the Home Secretary.

The Judge said he was satisfied that on the reassurances given by the US attorney and government, McKinnon would not face charges that could see him end up in Guantanamo Bay.

McKinnon is accused of causing damage to US military and NASA computers during the course of a hacking spree he allegedly conducted in search of evidence that the government was in possession of alien technology salvaged from wrecked UFOs.

He feared that he would face tough US anti-terrorist charges if he were extradited. The US had provided written assurances that though he would be tried as someone who had tried to "endanger the public safety" by "causing harm to the US government", he would not be tried as a terrorist. He was never given the Presidential waiver that his defence team said would be the only sure way to avoid prosecution as a terrorist.

However, Judge Evans maintained that the US was unlikely to break written assurances given in honour of a 100 year old extradition agreement with Britain.

John Reid, the Home Secretary, will now decide whether to extradite McKinnon in consideration of the statement made by Judge Evans. McKinnon will argue that the US can't be trusted to handle his case fairly. If that fails he will take his case to the High Court.

In a statement given outside the court, McKinnon’s team argued, "If extradited for offences which could readily be subjected to Military Order No. 1 and detained indefinitely without trial or effective remedy in the US and that his human rights would be substantially infringed, quite apart from his vulnerability, if tried in the US domestic courts, to a prison sentence wholly disproportionate to his crimes."

McKinnon has been processed under controversial extradition laws that give the United States the unreciprocated power to have people extradited without having to provide prima facie evidence.

He claimed to have not damaged information stored on the computers he broke into over an old fashioned 56K modem connection over 2001 and 2002.

He was in search of information that would prove a conspiracy put about by the The Disclosure Project, which claims to have witness testimonies from military and intelligence personnel that tell how anti-gravity and free energy devices have already been gleaned from crashed alien ships.

McKinnon has claimed he wanted to unearth the secrets for the benefit of mankind: "Old-age pensioners can't pay their fuel bills, countries are invaded to award oil contracts to the West, and meanwhile secretive parts of the secret government are sitting on suppressed technology for free energy," he said in an interview with the BBC last Friday.

He said he was caught while viewing on a NASA computer what he believed to be an image of a UFO that had been erased from a satellite image - something that is supposedly done routinely at building eight of NASA's Johnson Space Centre in Texas.®