Deport, Deprive, Extradite by Nisha Kapoor

Author:Nisha Kapoor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House LLC (Publisher Services)

Outside of the parliamentary debate, Liberal Democrat peer and then–Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation Lord Carlile of Berriew QC openly supported the extradition of Abu Hamza, Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan, commenting simply that it was ‘perfectly reasonable that they should be tried where the crime was aimed’, despite decisions over jurisdiction being a contentious issue in every one of these cases.20 Yet on Gary McKinnon, his view was that ‘there is no doubt that Mr McKinnon could be prosecuted in this country, given that the acts of unlawful access occurred within our jurisdiction (i.e., from his computer in North London)’.21 That Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan were also accused of computer-related offences committed from their homes in London did not, according to Carlile, warrant the same defence. It was through distinctions such as these that the rationalisations made in support of or against more draconian judicial arrangements for extradition were exposed for their underlying racialised logics. Seen through the fractured lens of criminalisation, due process and assumptions of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ were not so applicable to those who had a priori been framed as terrorism suspects. The selective use of this label was perhaps no more obvious than in the charges against Gary McKinnon, which were framed not in terms of terrorism but as computer-related offences.22

Mental health played as a racially coded trope here, too, further humanising Gary while further dehumanising Haroon and Talha. One strand of the political discussion surrounding the extradition of Gary McKinnon centred around the justice of criminalising an individual with mental health issues. The ‘naivety’ attributed to Gary in his search for UFOs, was presented as a trait characteristic of his Asperger’s syndrome.23 His depiction by the Daily Mail as a ‘harmless computer nerd’ whose mental health condition made him highly vulnerable drew from the assessment of medical experts who reported to the High Court that Asperger’s syndrome meant Gary was ‘vulnerable to the stress of social complexity’ and that the conditions of incarceration would mean there was a risk he would ‘take his own life’.24 Gary’s diagnosis of Asperger’s, indeed, came following his arrest and helped provide an explanation of his behaviour.25

Although mental health vulnerabilities further qualified Gary’s innocence and solicited empathy for his case, the mental health conditions of the Muslim men were rarely mentioned, and when they were it was often to promote an image of their irrationality and barbaric tendencies. The Daily Mail, for example, seemed to only report Talha Ahsan’s case in conjunction with Abu Hamza’s, as one of the ‘other’ Muslim men being extradited at the same time, and generally refrained from mentioning that Talha, too, had Asperger’s syndrome.26 Haroon Aswat’s case was scarcely reported by the British media, but when it was his paranoid schizophrenia was usually invoked alongside a depiction of him as Abu Hamza’s ‘aide’.27 Abu Hamza’s own physical disabilities, his prosthetic hand and one blind eye, compounded his villainous status, making him an ideal demonic trope.

The distinctive representations of the men were upheld

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