One law for Gary McKinnon – another for Akmal Shaikh?
I know it’s a quiet news day today, but it seems impossible to move for Government ministers expressing their disquiet at the judicial execution of Akmal Shaikh in China. Now I oppose and abhor the death penalty, anywhere, by any method and for any crime. But whilst accepting that this seems to have been a particularly horrific case of a man put to death without what we would see as a fair trial, for a crime that few countries see as a capital crime, there is one aspect that has been the focus of the appeals before the execution and the protests afterwards – Akmal Shaikh’s mental health.
Shaikh apparently suffered from bipolar disorder – previously known as manic depression. It is a ‘spectrum disorder’, meaning that it affects people differently and to varying extents. It is difficult to diagnose, partly because the symptoms can seem to be exaggerated patterns of ‘normal’ behaviour. Commenting on the execution, Foreign Secretary David Miliband said: “I… deeply regret the fact that our specific concerns about the individual in this case were not taken into consideration… These included mental health issues“.
Contrast this with the case of Gary McKinnon, the computer hacker due to be extradited to the USA, after judicial and political appeals have failed. Granted McKinnon will not face the death penalty, but what he will face if found guilty in a seemingly similar one-sided trial could be a living death or worse, as an independent psychiatrist has diagnosed MnKinnon as ‘suicidal’. Yet the Home Secretary has said that to prevent the extradition on the grounds of McKinnon’s mental health would be ‘unlawful’, saying: “I’m the only person who can make this decision and I have to make it on the basis of the facts and all the facts, and it is a quasi-judicial decision“.
What breathtaking hypocrisy! Where is the fairness condemning the execution of one mentally ill British man in China, whilst sending a another similarly ill man to the other side of the world to face a death by a thousand mental cuts? A pity that Blair’s compliant relationship with the US shows no sign of ending.
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Comments
03 February 2010, 1:04 am
for years the west was lecturing china about having an independent judiciary
guess what?!” they’re telling the chinese central govt to intervene in an independent local county court case
the Chinese court made an independent decision to execute shaikh – and it would have made exactly the same decision whether he was a foreigner or not a foreigner to have been caught in the same circumstances