A VICAR whose son is facing extradition to America for allegedly hacking into US Federal Reserve computers fears his son will kill himself if he is sent abroad.
Former Glasgow University student Lauri Love, 31, who has Aspergers, is accused of stealing sensitive data from Nasa and the US military and his lawyers say he faces up to 99 years in prison if he is found guilty.
READ MORE: Security services lose fight to force alleged hacker to hand over passwords
His father Alexander, a vicar who now works as a prison chaplain in Suffolk, said his son has sunk into a deep depression at the prospect of extradition and he fears he will not survive the ordeal.
Alexander Love branded Britain’s extradition treaty with the US unfair and “rendition by judicial process” and implored Britain – “the best court system in the world” – to hear the trial instead.
READ MORE: Security services lose fight to force alleged hacker to hand over passwords
Speaking ahead of his son’s appearance in court for an extradition hearing today, Alexander Love said: “What worries us most is that my son has stated emphatically that he will kill himself if he gets extradited to America.
“He just couldn’t countenance being away from his mum and dad, we are like his carers – we look after him.
“I’ll be honest with you, we come home some days and we think he might have killed himself. We live with this and we are scared at times.
READ MORE: Security services lose fight to force alleged hacker to hand over passwords
“When your first baby is born you go and check they are breathing while they are asleep in the cot, you just want to make sure. We are worried about what might happen to him.
“And he has on more than one occasion sat there scratching away and said to us ‘mum, dad if it wasn’t for you I would kill myself’. If he gets taken to America he won’t have that support.”
READ MORE: Security services lose fight to force alleged hacker to hand over passwords
Lauri Love, who played a high-profile role in the eight-month occupation of the University’s Hetherington Building in 2011 in protest at course cuts, is due to appear at London’s Westminster Magistrates Court for a two-day hearing about whether he should be extradited to the US.
His case has echoes of Gary McKinnon, whose extradition was eventually blocked by Home Secretary Theresa May after a decade-long battle.
READ MORE: Security services lose fight to force alleged hacker to hand over passwords
Alexander Love said the extradition treaty Britain has struck with the US is one-sided and amounts to “rendition by judicial process”. And he worries that the American prison system will be too harsh for his son to survive. He said: “They said if someone is deemed suicidal they put them in isolation to protect them and make them wear a suicide smock. We couldn’t believe they were actually proud of this plan.
“The America bill of rights says no American citizen should be subject to cruel and unusual punishment. Well they want to take a boy who has got Aspergers and very bad eczema and take him away and put an ocean between him and the people who are best suited to look after him – his mother and father.”
READ MORE: Security services lose fight to force alleged hacker to hand over passwords
He added: “I accept that it might be necessary to put Lauri on trial. But let the best legal system in the world, the best court system in the world, deal with what Lauri did. And let it be contested in our courts according to our laws.
“In this global village we live in now, the idea he has got to go to America to stand trial for something to do with computers is just absurd.”
READ MORE: Security services lose fight to force alleged hacker to hand over passwords
Alexander Love said his son, who was also prominent in the Glasgow Occupy movement, had become depressed as a teenager. when the family moved home and he “retreated” into computers.
Over the following years he has struggled with his mental health and has since been diagnosed with Aspergers.
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