Saving Gary McKinnon (14 page)

So if all men are equal, as they surely are, and if equal rights are to be adhered to, as they surely must, then our rights which were removed by Tony Blair’s government must surely be returned to us.

Are we not equal to Americans?

Do we not deserve the same rights?

2
5 December 2009 marked yet another Christmas spent wondering when this nightmare would end. At least the courts being closed over Christmas and the New Year meant that no one could come and snatch my son away during this time.

I thought about how our government was sacrificing its own citizens to the US, regardless of the ludicrous sentences proposed, and of what might happen to them once they were extradited.

Cyberspace is a creation of science-fiction writers and has no more legal existence than never-never land. If they really want to start targeting computer geeks, then surely they should start by embracing some very basic technology and try them by video link.

Stanley Tollman, an American-born citizen who was fighting extradition from the UK, was given a one-day suspended sentence when he pled guilty by video link here in 2007. So why does this not happen with British citizens fighting extradition? Are foreign nationals being given preferential treatment?

Our crusade continued and Melanie Riley from Bell Yard Communications organised a text campaign. It really took off after I did interviews with Talk Radio Europe and with LBC.
Days later, after I did an interview with George Galloway on his radio show, we got over 1,000 texts in one night in support of Gary. They were automatically emailed to the Home Office with proof of the number of texts received.

On 13 January 2010 we got a landmark legal decision: the wonderful Justice Mitting ruled that we could judicially review Home Secretary Alan Johnson’s decision to extradite.

I was ecstatic. I had long given up on Alan Johnson and because the court process tends to grind slowly, this gave me hope that a new government might be voted into power who would have the strength and wherewithal to bring in forum as they had promised and refuse to extradite Gary.

Forum meant that if the accused was physically in the UK during the alleged crime, as Gary was, a trial in the UK could take precedence over extradition.

We also had hopes that a new government would change the Extradition Act to bring in an automatic right to evidence that the accused could contest in a British court before any extradition could take place.

I was grateful to Justice Mitting for giving us the ‘JR’. It was heartening to know that there were some courageous and fair-minded judges out there.

We kept thinking that it would all be over soon. But it just seemed to go on and on and our money was dwindling as we had no time to earn any.

We were working full-time on campaigning to save Gary and our financially precarious position meant I had to do something fast before we ended up losing our home.

I loved our house, which sat in a beautiful English village next
to the village green, facing an eclectic mix of mainly independent shops. The village has a library and a post office, with good schools close by and beautiful woods and countryside on our doorstep. It also has the luxury of its own train station that takes you straight into King’s Cross in just twenty minutes. This was intended to be our forever home.

I decided I had to go to the bank to arrange a loan. Normally Wilson would have been the one to deal with this, but Wilson had been so stressed lately that I was terrified he might have a heart attack or a stroke or something if he had to deal with this on top of everything else. The worry was eating away at us. Coping with financial worries and health worries on top of our all-consuming worries about Gary was difficult.

We had a fair amount of equity in our house so I thought borrowing money on it wouldn’t be too difficult. The thing is, I’m quite shy and usually avoid doing things like that. I’d rather run a hundred miles than sit with the bank manager asking to borrow money. It’s also a pride thing, feeling that you have to beg to borrow.

I dressed relatively smartly that day but without compromising my identity. I always have my longish hair hanging down and I wasn’t going to wear it up or have it cut short, or try to portray a look I wasn’t comfortable with. For better or worse I was me. Campaigning for our survival.

The bank manager called me in. ‘Good morning, Mrs Sharp,’ he said, shaking my hand, ‘and how can we help you?’

‘Well, I might as well get straight to the point. I would like a loan secured on our house, which has a fair bit of equity in it. We’ve had to stop work temporarily as working full time on campaigning for my son takes up every second of our time and I just need enough to tide us over for, say, a year? Until this is all over and we can get back on our feet again, which I’m confident wouldn’t take very long.’

‘I have to tell you, Mrs Sharp, things are very difficult at the
moment. You know that we would love nothing more than to help but with this recession, and as you’re not actually working at the moment, it ties my hands somewhat. But if you give me your paperwork and wait here, I’ll check to see what I can do and I’ll be back very shortly.’

Very shortly seemed to take forever and I thought I was just wasting my time but eventually he came back.

‘Well, there are various options we can offer you for repayment, but I’m afraid that £15,000 is the maximum we could advance.’

‘Fifteen thousand! But the equity in the house is worth much more than that.’

I thought about how our house in this prime location was unmodernised when we first bought it and how Wilson had fitted a new kitchen and bathroom, laid oak floors and put in a stunning fireplace. Even though Wilson did all the work himself, it still cost us significantly more than £15,000, and that amount of money wouldn’t last long – not with the cost of fighting a campaign, train fares and just day-to-day survival.

Wilson and I have both always worked hard and managed to keep our heads above water and I told the bank manager that I had no doubt we could pull ourselves back up again once this ordeal was all over, but trying to convince someone in a bank that people in their sixties could do that was just not going to happen. They knew they couldn’t lose with our house but £15,000 just wouldn’t cut it for us so there was no point.

I wondered who had been clever enough to invent banks and encourage people to put their money there. I mean, what do we really need them for if they’re only willing to give us money when we don’t actually need it?

As I was leaving, the bank manager pointed to a side street. ‘By the way, do you know whose car that is over there?’

I looked across to see Gary’s bright yellow Triumph parked in a spot where there was no parking allowed.

‘Yes, it’s my son Gary’s car,’ I said, which the bank manager must have known, otherwise he wouldn’t have asked me.

‘Well, it’s been parked there for some time.’

‘Thank you,’ I said to the bank manager, in the way that British people do even when they want to scream.

I came out of the bank and crossed the road to where Gary’s car was parked. I couldn’t believe how many parking tickets were stuck all over the windscreen. It looked grubby and abandoned, as though it had been sitting there for years. I had been so preoccupied that I had forgotten that Gary even had a car as he hadn’t driven for so long.

I felt like crying as I went to meet Wilson at a coffee shop in town. I had so wanted to be able to tell him that financially, at least, everything was going to be OK and that we had a life-line, but instead I was going to tell him that we’d have to sell our house.

I was also going to have to do something about Gary’s car, as he owed a fortune in parking tickets.

I walked into the café and looked at Wilson sitting there. He looked up at me with crinkly smiling eyes, full of warmth and tenderness. He was so clever and talented and hardworking and loving; he was getting older and deserved so much more.

Wilson and Gary tended to think I was Goliath and that, thanks to my overly optimistic nature, I could always pull a rabbit out of the hat at the last minute. I tried to sound optimistic as I told Wilson that selling now and renting a place until house prices dropped was a really sensible thing to do, until after our fight for Gary was won.

I could hardly bear to look at the hurt in Wilson’s eyes. He looked so defeated but tried to smile and agree so that I would
feel OK. I wanted to hug him tight but knew if I did that I’d break down and cry.

There were lots of interviews over the next few weeks, including with Coast to Coast radio in America. I was worried about how American callers would react to Gary’s story but I had no need, as everyone who rang in to speak to me was kind and compassionate and thought that Gary should remain in the UK.

When I told one caller that the alleged damage was around £400,000 ($700,000) he said, ‘Jeez, is that all? The next advert coming up will cost more than that.’

That made me laugh but it was true. I was also interviewed by Jerry Pippin on his radio show. Jerry Pippin is an amazing American man who, when the police were making no headway finding the murderers of his mother, single-handedly tracked them down and had them arrested and eventually imprisoned.

Jerry supported Gary for years, devoting pages and pages on his website to our fight to save him. Many good Americans spoke out in support of Gary staying in the UK, including Dan Aykroyd, who has Asperger’s, and Charlie Sheen.

10 February was Gary’s birthday, and coincidentally Lucy’s too. Gary was now forty-four years old. It seemed unbelievable that at the time of his arrest by the Hi-Tech Crime Unit in 2002, he had just turned thirty-six. Gary had essentially lost eight years of his life. All he wanted was peace of mind and freedom from fear and I couldn’t give him that yet, but I was determined that I would, one day soon.

As Gary was no longer willing or able to do any interviews, Kerry Cassidy, who had interviewed him years before, flew over from America to interview me for Project Camelot, documenting
the testimony of whistle-blowers, on the day after Gary’s birthday. It was a long, in-depth interview; the questions asked were different and interesting and it turned out well. The support Gary got from American people was just amazing and so appreciated.

Kerry’s last question to me was, ‘Do you know that lots of people in America believe that you work for British intelligence? Is there any truth in that?’

I started laughing. Now I had heard everything. If only I did work for British intelligence; Gary would have been safe long ago. But nothing could be further from the truth. Kerry laughed too.

I imagine I was pretty unpopular with the intelligence services, who I believe regarded me as a thorn in their sides. On several occasions I had heard comments from official people on both sides of the pond, saying things such as, ‘They should extradite his mother and leave him here.’

What is it with those people? Do they ever listen to music? Or dance? Or run in the woods, or swim in the sea? Are they human? Or are they some kind of new species that feeds on fear? The world seemed crazy to me at that point in time. People who thought that Gary was an alien and that I worked for British intelligence definitely seemed to be from another planet.

Gary’s legal team and I had to submit our up-to-date evidence by the middle of February. Gary’s barrister, Ben Cooper, like Karen, held onto Gary tightly and refused to let go. Karen, Ben and Edward Fitzgerald submitted medical and legal evidence and I wrote the best statement I possibly could and included every potential piece of evidence I believed could help us.

I’m lucky I’m able to write a reasonably good letter, thanks to my parents instilling in me the importance of letter writing. This helped me to somehow get through to influential people from all walks of life. So many people already viewed what was
happening to Gary as unjust, and that gave me an opening, as they were at least prepared to read what I had written.

On 3 March we saw the Home Office evidence and were shocked. The Home Office had appointed a doctor who had no expertise whatsoever in Asperger’s to provide an
in absentia
medical report on Gary. The report was damning and it was crystal clear that its author had no knowledge whatsoever of ASD – something which the said doctor at least had the decency to admit to at the end of his report.

Now, why on earth would the Home Office decide, when appointing an expert witness for the prosecution, to appoint a doctor with no expertise in the condition he was to give evidence on?

The Home Office-appointed doctor also referred to Gary having a girlfriend, as though this is unheard of in people with Asperger’s. Yet as all the experts in the field know, Asperger’s is thought to be hereditary. Having a girlfriend or a wife would therefore have to be pretty common for this to be the case.

I was despondent, as any hopes for an independent medical report from the Home Office were fading.

It was our wedding anniversary, but any celebration was the furthest thing from our minds.

Zena, who worked closely with Nick Clegg, was constantly in touch with me, as were several of his right-hand people. The Lib Dems were very supportive of Gary at that time. Nick Clegg gave endless interviews to the newspapers to say that Gary should not be extradited and could be tried here in the UK, as did David Cameron, David Burrowes, David Davis, Keith Vaz, Kate Hoey, Boris Johnson and many others.

The support for Gary from around the world seemed never-ending. There is no doubt that the internet has created a platform for people to unite for a just cause. The strength of international people power should never be underestimated.

Many songs were written about Gary, including one in the form of a letter to Alan Johnson by Dan Bull, a well-known musician and songwriter who has Asperger’s.

Young American Nathan Pitt, who has Asperger’s, went to Senator Dianne Feinstein’s state director Jim Molinari and begged him to allow Gary to remain in the UK. A video of this was posted on YouTube and everyone I spoke to about it said it had brought tears to their eyes.

A Swedish film on Gary was posted on YouTube and cited him as a hero.

I was starting to think that we might not need our hard-won judicial review of Home Secretary Alan Johnson’s decision. There was an election looming, and the key players in the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties had taken up Gary’s cause, so we were naturally desperate for them to win as they were our best hope.