Sheffield student ‘sold down the river’ over TV Shack piracy case, says mum

Sheffield Hallam University undergraduate Richard O’Dwyer, 23, allegedly earned thousands of pounds through advertising on the TVShack website before it was closed down by authorities in the United States.

Just hours before Prime Minister David Cameron arrives in the US for talks with President Barack Obama, his mother Julia warned the US was coming for the young, the old and the ill, “and our Government is paving the way”.

Mrs O’Dwyer, of Cheltenham, was told Home Secretary Theresa May had signed the order authorising her son’s extradition this afternoon, two months after a district judge said the allegations justified a trial in the US.

It follows a series of high-profile extradition cases, the latest of which saw retired British businessman Christopher Tappin, 65, of Orpington, Kent, extradited to the US last month to spend 23 hours a day alone in his cell awaiting trial over arms dealing charges.

And 10 years after the US first asked for Asperger’s sufferer Gary McKinnon to be extradited over charges he hacked in to military computers in 2002, McKinnon, who says he was looking for evidence of UFOs, is still awaiting the Home Secretary’s decision.

Mrs O’Dwyer said: “Today, yet another British citizen is being sold down the river by the British Government.

“Richard’s life - his studies, work opportunities, financial security - is being disrupted, for who knows how long, because the UK Government has not introduced the much needed changes to the extradition law.”

She said the so-called Natwest Three “were right when they said if it could happen to them, it could happen to anyone”.

Bankers Gary Mulgrew, Giles Darby and David Bermingham fought and lost a four-year battle against extradition to the US over allegations of conspiring with former Enron executives to dupe the bank out of 20 million US dollars (£12.7 million).

The men later admitted one charge of wire fraud and were sentenced to 37 months in jail.

Mrs O’Dwyer went on: “The US is coming for the young (Richard), the old (Chris Tappin) and the ill (Gary McKinnon) and our Government is paving the way.

“By rights, it should make for an interesting conversation between the Obamas and Camerons aboard Air Force One - but I’m not holding my breath.

“If Richard appears to have committed a crime in this country - then try him in this country.

“Instead the Home Secretary wants to send him thousands of miles away and leave him languishing, just like Chris Tappin, in a US jail, before he has a chance to demonstrate his innocence, under British law, of the allegations made against him.”

She added: “It’s disgusting. Next time it may be your son. I urge everyone who cares about unfair extradition to write to their MP and insist this disreputable law is changed.

“We are now carefully considering all Richard’s legal options.”

O’Dwyer faces up to 10 years’ jail if convicted of the allegations, which were brought following a crackdown by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

His lawyer Ben Cooper has argued that the site did not store copyright material itself and merely pointed users to other sites, in the same way that Google and Yahoo operate.

Mr Cooper also said his client would be the first British citizen to be extradited for such an offence and would effectively become a “guinea pig” for copyright law in the US.

The US authorities allege that the student received more than 230,000 US dollars (around £147,000) in advertising revenue between January 2008 and 2010, when the site was shut down.

Critics, including Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and many MPs, have argued the existing treaty between the UK and the US is “one-sided” and must be changed.

But an independent review by retired Court of Appeal judge Sir Scott Baker last year found it was both balanced and fair.

O’Dwyer could now appeal to the High Court, and then to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, in a bid to block moves to extradite him to the US.