Liberty (advocacy group) a victory for Gary McKinnon, after a decade-long ordeal, as the Home Secretary, Theresa May, announced that she was refusing to allow Gary's extradition to the US on the basis that doing so would breach his Human Rights. Gary McKinnon was charged in 2002 of hacking into US military and NASA systems, but maintains that he was looking for UFOs and evidence of free energy suppression. Gary, who has Asperger Syndrome, could have spent up to 70 years in a US jail if convicted and it was argued by his lawyers in an appeal to the European Court of Human
Extradition to another may lead to international relations being strained. Often, the country to which extradition is refused will accuse the other country of refusing extradition for political reasons (regardless of whether or not this is justified). A case in point is that of Ira Einhorn, in which some US commentators pressured President Jacques Chirac of France, who does not intervene in legal cases, to permit extradition when the case was held up due to differences between French and American human rights law. Another long-standing example is Roman Polanski whose extradition was pursued by California for over 20 years. For a