Gary McKinnon, Asperger Syndrome, obsession with UFOs, and the wounded pride of Empire

Update, November 28, 2009.

The most recent decision by the Home Secretary to allow the extradition of Gary Mackinnon to the United States is not surprising. The absence of ethical content and responsible moral control in the decisions of the current government, its wholesale capitulation to the demands of the United States that US security concerns give carte blanche for political and military pressures, and that country's now expedient assertions about the importance of international law, come together against the ironic and morally tragic exposure of US and UK complicity that now forces seasoned diplomats, facing public enquiry, to openly question the legality and legitimacy of the war in Iraq. 

I have little to add to the reflections I offered in August. Except this. I am ashamed of the failure of the UK government to protect its own citizen. I am ashamed of the lack of moral courage and legal wisdom on the part of the Home Secretary and the Government which, if they are now over a barrel because of a bad law, were the very Government that drove through its approval. Either way, Gary Mackinnon should not be the one to bear the cost of ill conceived legislation enacted by a supine legislature administered by a domesticated administration.

Gary Mackinnon's mother asks the right question - if her son's Asperger's condition and his current distress, which no one denies, do not constitute a fundamental threat to his well-being such that it compromises his human rights, then what in fact does? "How does a British citizen claim asylum in his own country?" is one of those twisted legal questions that exposes the nonsense of the Home Secretary's position. Rightly, this country does not send people away if they face a credible theat of serious harm abroad. We have had no medical report published by the Home Office indicating Gary Mackinnon's health will withstand the trauma of extradition. The impact of edxtradition, trial and sentence on a person with autism whose sense of self and the world is so fundamentally different, is so obviously severe that it would rightly be called inhumane.  At which point I want to repeat here my post from August 1, and stand by each word of it.

........................................................... 

Disquiet. Unease.
A persistent mood of ethical anxiety.
Discomfort like toothache of the conscience.
Awakening suspicion that something is wrong.
Hard to place and hard to ignore anger.
An inner resistance to saying nothing.
 

1. No one denies that Gary McKinnon hacked into US computerised defence systems.
2. Computer hacking is bad enough. But to compromise high level national security systems is by any standards a matter of serious concern. In most cases it is also a matter of criminal intent and is rightly treated as such by the relevant legal and judicial systems. (Perhaps the vulnerability of such high level computer systems to attack from an amateur UFO researcher in the UK raises questions of incompetence or negligence which are themselves definable as criminal).
   
3. Extradition is an important legal process of national co-operation and of reciprocal help between nations in ensuring that it isn't possible for people to escape justice by virtue of living in another country. But for a nation to give up its citizens to another such laws need to be secure, fair, reciprocal and reviewable to avoid anomalies and injustice.
   
4. National security is the top of the agenda concern for the Unitred States for reasons that are obvious; the 9/11 attack and the determination to secure again the safety of the homeland, and as its inevitable corollary, the widespread hostility to the US and the UK amongst many Muslim countries and communities, many of the radicalised, following the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions by US and UK troops backed by other non Muslim nations.

So for Gary McKinnon to breach the supposedly elaborate security hardware and software of the Pentagon and other defence facilities, with their lauded military standard fail-safe systems, at such a sensitive time, raises questions that are both worrying and embarrassing for the United States and its global reputation. Somebody needs to pay.

Add now to these observations the equally undisputed fact that Gary McKinnon is a person with Asperger syndrome, obsessive about UFOs, and that his patterns of behaviour are classic expressions of a condition that essentially defines his way of relating to the world. Then ask what questions this raises about the legal and moral implications of a decision to extradite him to the United States, to stand trial for actions he does not deny, but which are explained by a pre-existing condition that is by definition related to compulsive behavioural patterns, and when the likeliest outcome is an inevitable and long jail sentence.

And this because the UK has a treaty with the United States intended to ensure co-operation in dealing with serious crime and terrorist threats, but which was intended for people with ambitions to kill, not persons with an autistic spectrum disorder. Add to this that UK Judges, charged with upholding the law, while acknowledging the severe impact of extradition on this man's mental health, which they themselves admit may be life-threatening, suggest nevertheless it would not be a breach of his human rights to extradite him to the United States. I find it profoundly ironic that Judges appointed to uphold law, including international and human rights law, take at face value "assurances of appropriate care", on the very same day it is reported that evidence about whether or not the CIA and british Intelligence knew of or were involved, directly or indirectly, in the mistreatment and alleged torture of a British citizen, could not be heard in a UK court, on the direct intervention of Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State. Human rights indeed! I am not reassured by the cynical ambiguity of the term "appropriate care" for someone who has so embarrassed the might of the United States, and whom the US sees as a continuing security threat.

I'm not arguing that Gary McKinnon should not face up to the consequences of what he did. He himself recognises that. But given his condition, there are issues of justice here that are deeper than the desire to put on trial, convict, sentence and make the public power statement that seems to be so important to the US authorities pursuing this extradition. The law is not there to serve the political interests of Empire, as instruments of power at the disposal of the state. Justice fundamentally involves using just laws justly, and for the purposes they were intended. Justice, and therefore moral and legal accountability, takes into consideration a person's capacities, intentions and ability to recognise how personal acts have social consequences. The proper administration of justice requires the law to take into account the reality of a person's medical condition and the impact of that condition, in this case autism, on a person's recognition of boundaries and the overall context of their actions - or why not arrest and try persons with Tourette syndrome for using obscene language in public space? As David Cameron said yesterday, in the application of law, justice is not incompatible with compassion in our ways of dealing with people. That is particularly important in a world where compassion now seems to be massively discounted, and hard edged "justice" understood as legal retribution is considered a high value virtue. Mercy does not undermine law, it enhances its authority, demonstrates its value to the community, and quality assures its expression for the public good.

What I miss in the judgement of the judges, and in the reiterated refusal of the Home Secretary to allow a trial in the UK, is the moral courage to discern more deeply, the mature wisdom to decide more humanely, and thus to raise our respect for the law as that which serves us fairly and well. Under this present Government, for all its hyped up claims about making our country more secure, our own citizens are considerably less safe. In the political and cultural background, can be heard the remorseless grind of the machinery of Empire, armoured and determined that those who threaten it will feel the full force of the law. Even when a particular law is badly framed, inadequately qualified and increasingly recognised as open to political manipulation.

That's why I'm suffering from

Disquiet. Unease.
A persistent mood of ethical anxiety.
Discomfort like toothache of the conscience.
Awakening suspicion that something is wrong.
Hard to place and hard to ignore anger.
An inner resistance to saying nothing.

Comments

[chris]

I agree. Thank you for expressing all the things that were bugging me on the long drive from the Welsh Borders at the weekend.

[Duncan]

Thanks for this post.much appreciated.

[RamonGustav]

I think you are not quite right and you should still studying the matter.