LONDON – British hacker Gary McKinnon, an Asperger’s sufferer who broke into US military computers, will not be extradited to the United States following a ten-year legal fight, Britain said Tuesday.
“Mr McKinnon is accused of serious crimes, but there is also no doubt that he is seriously ill,” interior minister Theresa May told parliament.
May said extradition would breach 46-year-old McKinnon’s human rights as his psychiatrists believed there was a high risk that he might attempt suicide if he were sent to the United States.
“I have concluded that Mr McKinnon’s extradition would give rise to such a high risk of him ending his life that a decision to extradite would be incompatible with Mr McKinnon’s human rights,” she said.
“I have therefore withdrawn the extradition order against Mr McKinnon.”
British prosecutors will now decide whether to pursue action against the hacker through the British courts, May added.
McKinnon was arrested in London in 2002 for breaking into dozens of Pentagon and NASA computers, leaving 300 machines at a naval air station immobilized just after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
He has never denied the hacking, claiming he was looking for classified US documents on UFOs. He could have faced up to 60 years in a US jail for the breaches, which the United States says caused $800,000 (615,000 euros) worth of damage.
The hacker, who has become a symbol of the campaign to revamp Britain’s extradition deal with the United States, lost appeals in Britain’s House of Lords and the European Court of Human Rights during his decade-long fight.
He was diagnosed with Asperger’s, a form of autism, in 2007, after an autism expert watched him in a television interview and contacted McKinnon’s lawyer.
McKinnon’s mother Janis Sharp, who has campaigned vigorously for her son to be spared extradition, expressed delight at the decision.
“Thank you Theresa May from the bottom of my heart. I always knew you had the strength and courage to do the right thing,” she said.

More from AFP
- Cyberattacks Target Websites of German Airports, Admin
- Meta Slapped With 5.5 Million Euro Fine for EU Data Breach
- International Arrests Over ‘Criminal’ Crypto Exchange
- France Regulator Raps Apple Over App Store Ads
- More Political Storms for TikTok After US Government Ban
- Meta Hit With 390 Million Euro Fine Over EU Data Breaches
- Facebook Agrees to Pay $725 Million to Settle Privacy Suit
- China’s ByteDance Admits Using TikTok Data to Track Journalists
Latest News
- British Retailer JD Sports Discloses Data Breach Affecting 10 Million Customers
- Vulnerabilities in OpenEMR Healthcare Software Expose Patient Data
- Russia-Linked APT29 Uses New Malware in Embassy Attacks
- Meta Awards $27,000 Bounty for 2FA Bypass Vulnerability
- The Effect of Cybersecurity Layoffs on Cybersecurity Recruitment
- Critical Vulnerability Impacts Over 120 Lexmark Printers
- BIND Updates Patch High-Severity, Remotely Exploitable DoS Flaws
- Industry Reactions to Hive Ransomware Takedown: Feedback Friday
