by Sharp, Janis
Gary fell silent.
‘What is he in prison for, Gary?!’
‘He’s accused of murdering someone but I’ve told him my mum and dad are Scottish.’
‘Oh, that’s all right then.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m being sarcastic, Gary, ignore me. How did they know your address? Surely they should have contacted Karen, your solicitor, first and arranged for you to go into the police station instead of pouncing on you in the street and bundling you into a car?’
‘I’m sorry, Mum.’
‘It’s not your fault. How can they be allowed to arrest you three and a half years after the fact? How can they?!’
Wilson took the phone.
‘It’ll be OK, Gary. We’ll see you in court tomorrow and your lawyer will sort it out.’
‘Someone else wants the phone. I have to go in a minute.’
‘OK. Take care, Gary, we love you.’
‘Love you too.’
I couldn’t move. This deep, dark, pervading fear was invading the hollow space in my heart at an unsafe speed, ruthlessly forcing happiness to eject without my heart having a chance to prepare for the effects of being plunged into darkness.
‘Oh Wilson, how will Gary survive in Brixton Prison? What if he’s extradited? This can’t be happening.’ I was stifling the sobs that were rising to my throat. ‘Are we suddenly living in Nazi Germany? He’s a computer geek, for God’s sake, a computer geek! If he’d rung us we could have done something.’
‘We couldn’t, Janis, what could we have done?’
‘We could have crashed into their car and got Gary away and I could have hidden him.’
‘We couldn’t, Janis, you’re not thinking logically.’
‘I am thinking logically, he can’t go there, he’d never survive, you know that!’
‘I know that but the Americans have sat on it for over three years and how are they going to explain that to the judge? The courts won’t extradite him and he’ll get bail until it’s sorted out, it’ll be OK.’
‘What if he doesn’t get bail? And even if he does it will probably be about £100,000 and we couldn’t afford anything like that in a million years.’
‘You’re panicking, Janis.’
‘I’m panicking, I am, I’m panicking. Will you go and see to the children, Wilson? I need to try and get myself together and I don’t want them to see me being upset.’
‘OK. Don’t worry, Janis, it’ll be OK.’
We were now caring for a group of five young siblings and I was fighting hard to remain calm.
Losing control was rare for me but this heart-stopping fear left me clutching at the air in desperation for something or someone to appear out of the blue and to make everything OK again.
‘I wish you were here, Mamma, I’m scared and I don’t know what to do.’
• • •
The 2003 extradition treaty wasn’t supposed to be used retrospectively, so how could our courts allow this? The US had been sitting on Gary’s case since 2002 when they issued an arrest warrant and announced their intention to extradite, yet the CPS hadn’t made them produce prima facie evidence as they were obliged to do at that time. Instead, the US had been permitted to wait until 2005 before getting a UK arrest warrant for extradition, by which time the 2003 UK–US treaty was being used by the UK and evidence was no longer required to extradite any British citizen. However, the treaty was still not ratified by the US. How could this be allowed? They could never justify a three-year delay in court, surely?
I wasn’t able to see Gary until the next day, when he was brought to Bow Street Magistrates’ Court. We had never been there although we knew the area well.
We passed the beautiful sculpture of the ballet dancer glinting in the sunlight as she sat pensively, with head bowed, outside Bow Street Court, as though sensing the worry of the troubled people filing past her before they walked through the imposing courtroom doors into the dark and dismal foyer full of desperate people.
The contrast of walking from the light into the gloom and seeing unfortunates huddled with their lawyers in darkened corners of this Dickensian scene was chilling. It’s one of those places you don’t want to go into and can’t wait to get out of.
The inside had panelled wooden walls and smelled old and musty, the way those historic buildings do. It was a place of wigs and hierarchy and sombreness. I wore a long black unbuttoned coat dress, with black trousers and top underneath and I was now feeling the heat on this hot June day. Presumably because of my black clothes, I was mistaken for a barrister when I was in the foyer and security allowed me to go through first.
Old school friends of Gary’s were there and journalists were everywhere. This was the first time I had met Lucy and it was under the darkest of circumstances. I removed my long black coat as I walked into the courtroom, and could feel the eyes of the journalists on us.
Gary hadn’t arrived and I was worried. Had something happened to him that they hadn’t told us? Had he been attacked by the man sharing the cell?
Eventually Gary arrived very late because the prison guards had forgotten about him. It was unbelievable: they had actually forgotten about him and had to get another van to collect him from Brixton Prison to bring him to the court.
I had visions of hijacking the van and rescuing Gary and getting him to a place of safety. You have an absolute duty to protect your child and if you leave it too late and they are carted off to a land that has a judicial system that thinks Guantanamo prison camp is acceptable, or that locking a prisoner up in solitary confinement for up to forty years is not torture, or that putting a man to death after decades on death row is not barbaric, and where male rape in prisons is so endemic that suicide becomes the only option for some – then what does that say about you as a parent or as a human being?
Would anyone simply allow their child to be extradited without putting up the fight of their lives, if they realised for just one second what was at the other end? Of course they wouldn’t.
Gary walked into the court and slouched forward as he stood in the dock, the way you do when you’re wishing the ground would open up and swallow you.
‘Stand up straight, Mr McKinnon,’ the judge ordered in sergeant-major-style voice.
Gary stood to attention as instructed. It was hard sitting there watching, as he looked so vulnerable.
The journalists all laughed when they heard that Gary’s passport was years out of date and had been issued to him when he was at school, as he never travelled. The judge banned Gary from using the internet, which seemed crazy as the US and the CPS had left Gary on the internet for three and a half years after his arrest in 2002, proving that they regarded him as no threat whatsoever, and Gary had not abused that trust.
I was convinced bail was going to be £100,000 or more, which we could never afford. Gary was chewing his nails and staring down at the floor.
His barrister asked for bail and explained we were not wealthy and, unbelievably, the prosecutor, a kind woman, didn’t object and the magistrate set bail at £5,000.
She didn’t object! This was the best news I’d heard since Gary was arrested. He was going to be bailed, he’d be free again and as long as he was free he’d be OK. I just had to fight to get the truth out and to keep him free. I could do that.
The judge ordered the next court hearing to take place on 27 July 2005.
I was ecstatic and so relieved I almost ran out of the courtroom.
Outside in the sunshine I could breathe again. Looking up at the sky I wanted to spin round with my arms outstretched and get lost in the dizziness, the way you do when you’re a child and you and the sky become one.
The bail money had to be paid in cash and we only had a few hours left to raise it. We ran around using cash cards and credit cards but daily limits on bank cards meant we were still well short of what we needed and the banks were closed. We drove to Enfield and borrowed money from close friends who don’t trust banks. Cash is king, they said,
and that day it was.
I could barely believe that at virtually the last minute we had managed to get the whole amount together, but the bail office at Bow Street Magistrates’ was closing so we had to run to have any chance of making it in time.
We got there too late and my heart sank as I realised it was past closing time. We walked up to the door anyway and were taken aback when it suddenly opened. The young women who worked there had waited for us to arrive with the money so that we could collect Gary from Brixton Prison and take him home.
This was the start of people we didn’t know going out of their way to help us and I was so grateful to them as I didn’t want Gary to have to spend another night in a prison cell.
We drove to Brixton. They had already released Gary, who was waiting outside the prison for us when we arrived. He was free, they didn’t have him, and he was on his way home.
Next day we were sitting at the kitchen table looking through the newspapers and there was a horrendous photo of Gary on the front pages. Media headlines shouted CYBERTERRORIST and CRIMINAL MASTERMIND, which anyone who had met Gary knew was the furthest thing from the truth.
‘That photo doesn’t look anything like you, what have they done?’ I was looking at one of the worst photos of Gary I’d ever seen.
‘I was in the police van and the photographers were pressing their cameras against the high blacked-out windows and flashbulbs were going off non-stop. They were banging against the van and shouting “Gary! Gary!” I was low down on the floor of the van and I realised the photos would be in all the papers and I didn’t want to look like a criminal, so I looked up and I tried to smile. Huge mistake, eh?’
‘It’s not your fault,’ said Wilson as he looked at the papers.
‘The photos were taken with wide-angled lens through tinted windows and it’s the fish-eye distortion that’s made you look odd, that photo looks nothing like you. It might have been designed to make you look sinister to make the story seem more dramatic.’
‘Please don’t get involved, Mum, or I’ll look silly, needing my mum to speak up for me when I’m thirty-nine years old,’ said Gary worriedly.
I decided that if it all went smoothly I’d keep a very low profile but if things looked as though they were going to go badly, I would step in.
Gary was articulate, of that there was no doubt, but he was vulnerable and young for his age and could easily misjudge the mood or motives of others. He tended to get the wrong end of the stick, causing him to respond in a way that could be misinterpreted. Many people thought Gary was aloof, when in fact he was quiet and lacked confidence.
I was hugely relieved that Gary was free again and I knew I had to keep him free. To do that I had to learn everything about the extradition treaty and about how everything works inside and outside the courts. I initially stayed away from the meetings he had with his legal team as he wanted to prove he could do this on his own and I didn’t want to embarrass him.
Gary started giving interviews and every time I read them I would want to curl up and die. He was being asked by journalists to tell them what he had done and how he had done it. They understandably wanted a story but Gary’s freedom and very life was on the line and I don’t think he realised that he might be making things worse for himself. However, I quickly discovered that people liked Gary. From young guys and girls to old white-haired ladies and men, who invariably described Gary as that lovely young man.
I remember the prosecutors giving interviews where they were irritated as they felt that Gary was being portrayed as some sort of choirboy, but Gary was just being Gary, and his gentle nature, honesty and naivety were transparent to many people.
It was 27 July 2005 and we were due back in court for the second time. I wore the most conventional thing I owned but also wore my favourite yellow platform shoes.
Wilson and Gary usually wore casual clothes but today they were both dressed in the way that every Celt is taught by their parents to dress for such a sombre occasion: in smart suits.
It was a warm, wet day in London as we again walked past the ballet dancer, her head still bowed as the rain washed over her body. Stepping back through the dark, heavy wooden doors of Bow Street Magistrates’, the intoxicating atmosphere of oppression in the air drained hope from the hearts of the hopeful.
Photographers and journalists congregated outside and Gary was nervous. He always carried a small bottle of water when he was going in and out of court and I think that holding the bottle somehow helped him to stay calm.
We met Gary’s QC, Edmund Lawson, for the first time. Impressive and intelligent, he was also a showman who without effort commanded the attention of everyone he spoke to both inside and outside the court. Edmund had a warm personality and a great sense of humour.
This was the first chance I’d had to speak to Karen, as after the previous court hearing we had left immediately to try to raise the bail money.
Karen was young with blonde hair. A bit different from other solicitors, she wore trendy clothes and fishnet stockings. She was caring, intelligent and down to earth and thankfully didn’t seem intimidated by anyone.
We went upstairs to the courtroom, to find most of the seats already occupied by journalists but we all managed to squeeze in.
The prosecutor hadn’t turned up, so we sat around for a long time until we were informed that the prosecutor was going to be late, then sat around a while longer until the judge appeared.
‘Sit where you are, Mr McKinnon, as you will become cramped in the seat in front of me,’ said the judge, referring to the dock.
A compassionate judge – this seemed like a good start.
When the charges were read out they sounded damning. The US government appeared to have dropped the charges relating to intrusions into US universities that had been listed in the original indictment. The US universities had subsequently announced that no damage had taken place. Instead the prosecutor now concentrated only on government facilities. Emotive names such as Pearl Harbor and references to ‘after 9/11’ were used, making it sound as though Gary had single-handedly controlled the entire American military machine from his home computer in his bedroom in north London. It was ridiculous. Gary’s knowledge was deliberately being overrated – or perhaps it’s just that the prosecutors were computer illiterate and had no idea of the reality of what Gary had or hadn’t done.
The majority of the judges seemed ill equipped to understand, as, I believe, were some of the prosecutors whose information the judges were relying on. If Gary had been capable of bringing the US military to its knees from his very basic home computer on a dial-up connection, then God help the planet.
I didn’t like where this was going. Everything was escalating out of all proportion and I knew then they were going to try to crucify Gary. The Official Secrets Act was mentioned despite the fact we’d been told that no classified information was involved, as the networks he had allegedly wandered through were non-classified.
Surely instead of spending a fortune on prosecuting people they should spend it on securing their systems against a real attack from an unfriendly country with sophisticated equipment?
Gary seemed to me like a scapegoat for incompetence more than anything else. They tried to make him sound like an expert, which he isn’t. As Gary said, he’s a phisher, not a hacker. Real hackers use much more sophisticated methods and they don’t leave silly cyber-notes.
Part of Gary’s bail conditions in 2005 were that he was not allowed to use the internet, but this judge said Gary could use the internet for work providing he gave the police and the courts his IP address. Unfortunately the kindly judge didn’t understand that if Gary returned to his previous job working in networks there would be hundreds of different IP addresses, as every computer has its own one.
Gary’s QC, Edmund Lawson, said he was concerned that they might be planning to try Gary in a US military court, using national security as a reason, and he raised this with the judge.
‘In that ca
se I can’t send him,’ announced the judge.
‘What?’ My ears pricked up. This was amazing. The judge was going to refuse to extradite!
At that point Edmund asked the judge for a private word in the back and they disappeared through a doorway. When they re-emerged the judge didn’t mention refusing extradition and I couldn’t understand why. Later on the US provided an unsigned diplomatic note which supposedly gave an assurance that a military tribunal would not be used – but as the note was unsigned, there was no assurance.
At the following court hearing the prosecutor suddenly raised part of a conversation that took place in the US embassy and was looking pleased with himself, when suddenly Gary’s QC jumped in and said that an American prosecutor had announced that he’d like to see Gary fry.
The prosecutor looked shocked and a bit worried and said something to the effect that Edmund Lawson wasn’t allowed to bring that in as it was part of a privileged conversation.
‘Oh yes I can,’ said Edmund excitedly. ‘You just brought in part of that same conversation and have therefore opened it up, allowing me to bring it in.’
‘Fry’! I couldn’t believe what had just been said. Well, Gary couldn’t go. Anyone thinking someone should ‘fry’ for computer misuse had to be crazy.
Edmund Lawson was a hero, unafraid to confront the court with the truth and to challenge authority when it was in the wrong.
• • •
The judge by his own volition changed Gary’s bail conditions so that Gary only had to sign at the police station twice a week, as opposed to every evening. This was in spite of the prosecutor’s protest that if it were possible they’d have liked Gary to sign at the police station every few hours.
I couldn’t understand why, but the judge also ruled that Gary’s address was to be made public. He had been told that Gary had previously lost a job because of the publicity and the journalists camping on his doorstep.
The case was postponed until 18 and 20 October so that an expert lawyer from America could come over with an affidavit which, we hoped, would help. Clive Stafford Smith was also going to give evidence for the defence, about the torture and inhumane conditions that he said existed in the US.