How May changed the law

THE cases of Lauri Love and Gary McKinnon have many similarities. Both have Asperger’s and were accused of hacking into US computer networks.

But their battles against extradition took very different courses thanks to a change in the law introduced by Theresa May.

Mr McKinnon, originally from Glasgow, was arrested by British police in 2002 after the US Justice Department accused him of hacking into Nasa and US military computers. He then faced a decade-long legal fight against being sent for trial in America.

In 2012, after successive Labour home secretaries ruled he could be extradited, Mrs May decided to block the US authorities’ bid to prosecute Mr McKinnon there. The then home secretary subsequently transferred the power to prevent extradition to the courts by introducing a legal principle known as the Forum Bar in 2013.

Judges can halt extraditions if most of the alleged crime took place in the UK and it would not be in the interests of justice for the accused to be tried abroad. To use the Forum Bar – which is enshrined in the Extradition Act 2003 – a judge considers factors including where most of the harm was committed, where the evidence, and victims are located, and the accused’s connections to the UK.

Mr Love’s lawyers appealed against his extradition on the grounds that District Judge Nina Tempia did not apply the Forum Bar when she allowed his extradition in 2016. His legal battle was the first test of the Forum Bar in UK law. Yesterday it was upheld by the most senior judge in England and Wales.