Saving Gary McKinnon (25 page)

After the press conference was over, individual TV interviews took place in the room. I spoke to Kay Burley on Sky News and Kay asked me what I thought of what Alan Johnson had said about Gary. The former Home Secretary came across as quite brutal and personally angry that Gary had not been extradited. I said:

Any MP worth their salt knows when to unite over a good
decision
and Alan Johnson’s bitter comments reflected badly on him. When I had written to him he rightly said that Gary’s case was no longer anything to do with him; yet he seemed personally outraged when extradition was refused, in spite of the fact that he was no longer even shadow Home Secretary.

I was really surprised that the mild-mannered Michael Portillo had wanted Gary to be extradited and said on TV that Theresa May had made the wrong decision. I thanked our lucky stars that it was David Burrowes who was Gary’s MP and not Michael Portillo, a one-time MP for the same borough. David Burrowes is a good man who fights the good fight and is not intimidated by anyone, no matter how powerful.

On the day of her announcement, when Theresa May informed the advisers of her decision, a few of the ‘unelected’ advisers were apparently sitting in Parliament with their arms folded, absolutely seething that the Home Secretary had dared to make a decision they did not want.

It puzzled me that Gary incurred such wrath, when a convicted ‘most wanted’ American paedophile whose extradition to the US was refused seemed to have brought not a murmur from the same quarters.

Theresa May had taken legal advice from multiple eminent professionals. As an elected minister, she had the strength and wherewithal to make her own decisions.

While being interviewed, one of the radio stations told me that they had just interviewed Professor John Arquilla, the expert on cyber-warfare and adviser to the US government, and that he had expressed his support for Theresa May’s decision. It was so decent and courageous of Professor Arquilla to have said this, and so much respect to him for that.

A constant round of radio and TV interviews went on until late that evening but I was more than happy to repay the media for their support, as without them the outcome might have been very different for Gary.

Michael Seamark from the
Daily Mail
said that after I had thanked him by name during the press conference his daughter told him that he was trending on Twitter and Michael’s wife said, ‘What’s “trending”?’ Michael laughed and explained.

We eventually got home and emails had flooded in.

An eminent psychologist told us that he wept when he heard the news while he was travelling on the tube.

Nurses said that huge screams rang out in the wards when they heard Theresa May’s decision.

A crowd in Saudi Arabia cheered loudly when the news was broadcast on TV in their club restaurant.

London taxi drivers were cheering and beeping their horns when they heard the news and even people in Australia and in Singapore were cheering and crying. Twitter was buzzing with people in Germany tweeting that they were laughing, crying and dancing when they heard the news, as were people in Israel and, yes, in America too.

Teachers in schools across the country wept when the news
came through on their mobiles. And the whole village where Gary’s solicitor Karen lives held a party to celebrate.

This was a truly international celebration of how the good in people could lead to justice for an ordinary, yet extraordinary, man.

The phone was ringing continuously. I picked it up and a familiar voice on the other end exclaimed passionately, ‘Janis! You’ve done it! You’ve f***ing done it!’ It was Trudie Styler. ‘And not only have you done it! But you’ve changed the f***ing law!’

As well as being hugely relieved that Gary wouldn’t be going anywhere, Trudie was jubilant about Theresa May’s decision to bring in forum to prevent other people who had never left the UK from being extradited.

She was about to go back on stage in New York, in a play called
The Exonerated
, depicting the true-life experiences of exonerated death row prisoners ultimately proved to be innocent.

As Gary’s extreme suicide risk and decade of virtual house arrest was akin to being on death row, this was a fitting end to an extraordinary day.

W
ilson and I had to get up at 5 a.m. the next day as more TV crews were coming to the house for interviews. Several large satellite vans took up residence in the street and masses of
electrical
cables were fed into our house and across the living room floor. We’d had barely any sleep but we were so happy. It was over. The nightmare was finally over.

Everyone asked us how we had celebrated and I had to tell them that we had been doing interviews up until the night.

Later, a young woman tweeted me to say, ‘So happy to hear the news, how are you feeling now?’

‘Much better than you,’ I replied.

Luckily she was sharp enough to realise right away that I had meant to write ‘much better thank you’ but had mistakenly missed out the ‘k’ in the word ‘thank’.

Lord Maginnis rang to say how happy he was about the
decision
– a decision he had worked so very hard for. Endless emails were still arriving, including from another one of our supporters, Baroness Browning, who had championed Gary’s case both in and out of the Home Office.

We expected life to be quiet now but interview requests still came thick and fast and the lovely Michael Seamark continued
to take us out for lunch, which was so much more enjoyable now that the fear had gone.

Armed with gifts of bottles of champagne, we went into Doughty Street Chambers to have a celebratory conference with Karen Todner, Ben Cooper and Edward Fitzgerald, Gary’s astounding legal team.

Gary was very quiet and was still finding it difficult to believe that his almost eleven-year nightmare really was over. He was seeing Professor Digby Tantam and then Professor Emmy van Deurzen on a regular basis. Emmy is ideal for Gary and is helping him learn how to start living again. It is clear that this will take a long time.

On 7 November Barack Obama was re-elected as President of America.

Liberty asked me to co-present a human rights award on 19 November. Shami was as welcoming as always. Comedienne Sandi Toksvig was hosting the show, and asked me who I was when I was led into the green room. I told her my name, but was feeling a bit shy and didn’t explain that I was Gary’s mum, which I should have. She said, ‘I know who you are,’ although I’m not sure she did.

Lieutenant Colonel Nicholas Mercer, the army’s former chief legal adviser in Iraq, now an Anglican priest, was in the green room. He spoke to me at length and really put me at my ease. He is the most wonderful man, filled with warmth and humanity.

Later, when I was sitting on my own, Kevin Maguire and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown were sitting opposite me. I had seen Yasmin speaking up for Gary on many occasions, so I introduced
myself and thanked her. Yasmin was lovely and immediately made me feel at home.

We met up with Julia O’Dwyer, a wonderful woman I got to know when her son Richard was fighting extradition to the US for alleged copyright infringement. Julia joined us on Twitter to campaign against the 2003 extradition treaty and was an awesome fighter for her son and against injustice. Jimmy Wales also championed Richard’s cause.

I went back to my seat in the green room and was sitting quietly and feeling a bit lost when suddenly this friendly voice called out ‘Janis’, as if they’d known me for years. It was Benedict Cumberbatch. I had never met him before but everyone thought that in his role of Sherlock he looked and sounded like Gary, as did I. Benedict chatted for quite a while and I found him easy to talk to, not only because of his similarities to Gary but because his conversation was so interesting.

I co-presented the award with Tim Farron MP and there were two joint winners, the Open Rights Group and 38 Degrees, which I thought was great.

Gary’s barrister, Ben Cooper, won the Human Rights Lawyer of the Year Award and it was presented to him by none other than Benedict Cumberbatch.

After the presentations Shami came on stage to announce that they had a surprise. They wheeled a piano on stage, Emeli Sandé appeared and I could hardly believe it when she started singing ‘I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free’.

This was Gary’s song, and now it was being sung at the Liberty Human Rights awards and Gary was free.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown was sitting next to Wilson and me in the audience and I was telling her how this song relates to Gary. I was smiling from ear to ear and probably not making much
sense, but I was just so happy. I had waited so long for moments like this.

I met Diane Blood at the reception that was held afterwards. Diane is such an inspirational woman and although I knew the story of her fight to use her dead husband’s frozen sperm to have children, it was great to hear the details of her hard-won fight. I also hadn’t realised that Diane’s children were autistic.

We caught our train home in the nick of time. Our entire lives seem to be last minute, and constantly hanging from a cliff edge loses its appeal after a while.

The following day I took Gary to his appointment with Professor van Deurzen. Gary was nervous and stressed and wanted to stay at home, but afterwards he said that it had been helpful and he was glad he had gone.

Trudie Styler had arranged a party for Gary at her London home on Thanksgiving Day, 22 November. I started sending out invitations and got a lovely email from Graham Nash, another person who had done so much to help Gary, explaining why he wouldn’t be coming:

Jacqui Smith had approved extradition on Thanksgiving Day 2008. Four years later we were celebrating Gary’s freedom from extradition on Thanksgiving Day 2012.

I knew he was nervous, but eventually Gary was persuaded to
come along with Wilson, Lucy and me. I wished that Karl Watkin, a friend of Trudie’s, could have been there too, as along with Melanie he has done so much to fight the 2003 extradition treaty.

As soon as we walked in to Trudie’s house the atmosphere was good. Trudie was there to greet everyone and was so welcoming and kind. Sting’s sister Anita was there too and is a genuinely lovely person, and I think a little bit shy.

Trudie’s daughter Eliot Paulina, nicknamed Coco by her family, joined the party a bit later. Eliot looks younger than her age and has a real innocence and openness about her. She’s a first-class vocalist and has a band named I Blame Coco.

I’m amazed that Coco isn’t already as well known as Sting, because she is just as talented as her dad. I’m sure her new album will reach an even wider audience than it already has.

Our friend Joe Winnington and his wife, and Joe’s sister Polly and her husband – Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour – weren’t able to be there as Polly and Joe’s father was dying. It was poignant to think of them saying goodbye just as we were celebrating not having to say goodbye.

Politicians, peers, journalists, musicians, artists, doctors and tweeters, some with Asperger’s and Tourette’s, all mixed well and everyone had the most amazing time. So many people we know commented on how fascinating and exceptionally intelligent Dr Jan Vermeulen and his wife were. Everyone enjoyed talking to them as they were so interesting and such genuinely nice people.

The French doors in the living room opened onto the garden, and the warmth in our hearts made the winter feel more akin to a warm summer’s night. Duncan Campbell was also a huge hit with everyone.

Coco later took Claire Simmons, my right-hand person in the campaign, to a club called Chinawhite. She was really impressed and hoped she didn’t embarrass Coco by being too uncool.

Trudie sent me an email after the party:

It was now December and I thought everything was all over when suddenly I started dreaming that lots of camera crews and journalists were in our house again. In one dream there was a young pregnant journalist from the
Daily Mail
.

I also dreamed of looking out of the window and seeing my mum walking away down the garden and across the fields. I waved to her and called for her to come into the house but she looked up, waved back and then walked away.

I was scared again: I thought my mum was telling me that something bad was going to happen. But Wilson and our friends thought my mum was waving goodbye, as she had been with me in spirit to help Gary and was leaving as he was now going to be OK.

It was 13 December and Biba, our old dog, had died the day before. Wilson dreamed that night that Biba came and dropped our diary at his feet and that it opened at the page dated 14 December – my birthday.

The next day we were out when we got a call from Karen to say that the CPS had been in touch and were announcing their decision that afternoon, on my birthday, about whether to
prosecute
Gary. We rushed home and all the TV crews and press started arriving – including a young pregnant woman from the
Mail
, just as I had dreamed.

Here we were again, waiting for news, but I wasn’t really worried
this time. I knew that the CPS had no evidence of the damage that had been alleged by the US and that Gary had always denied.

The CPS announced their decision on TV: they did not have evidence that they felt could lead to a conviction. Due to such a low prospect of conviction, and due to the ‘passage of time’, they were not going to prosecute. Absolute finality, at last.

We recognised most of the TV crews as I’d done so many interviews over the years, but this time I wasn’t pleading for Gary’s life; I was thanking everyone for his freedom. Harry Smith from ITV said it was a rare pleasure to cover a story of this type with a happy ending.

Trudie emailed:

Such a lovely message and such a perfect birthday.

Had Gary been tried in the UK, I believe we could have proved that no evidence of damage existed and complete closure would have been attained. However, in truth, Gary wasn’t up to more pressure being inflicted on him that might well have lasted for many more years. Dr Vermeulen had also stated that Gary was unfit for trial.

Our nightmare had ended with Theresa May’s decision; that was the important one. I later read an interview she did with Allison Pearson. When the Home Secretary was asked about never having had children, she said quietly, ‘It just didn’t happen,’ and admitted to a sense of loss when looking at families. I felt sad that the woman who had saved my child’s life didn’t have any of her own, but I was comforted to read that she has a happy marriage.

The CPS decision on Gary gave us closure on this side of the pond. The end of the Mayan calendar that many thought signified the end of the world brought an end to our ten-year nightmare and a new beginning for Gary … but here’s the sting in the tail.

The sad part of this happy ending is that Gary can never go to Scotland, the land of his birth. If he leaves England or Wales the US could have him arrested and could possibly start the extradition request all over again.

Gary is very close to his dad, but if Charlie ever becomes
seriously
ill Gary will be unable to visit him in Glasgow, and if his dad dies Gary will not be able to attend the funeral. America has not lifted its request for extradition but has left it hanging over Gary’s head like the sword of Damocles. Nonetheless, Gary is free, and for that we are eternally grateful.