Britain said yesterday that Gary McKinnon, an Asperger’s sufferer who hacked into US military computers, will not be extradited to the United States, ending his 10-year legal battle.

Interior minister Theresa May said extradition would breach 46-year-old McKinnon’s human rights as his psychiatrists believed there was a high risk that he would attempt suicide were he sent to the US.

“Mr McKinnon is accused of serious crimes, but there is also no doubt that he is seriously ill,” May told Parliament.

“I have concluded that Mr McKinnon’s extradition would give rise to such a high risk of him ending his life that a decision to extradite would be incompatible with Mr McKinnon’s human rights. I have therefore withdrawn the extradition order against Mr McKinnon.”

British prosecutors will now decide whether the hacker should face trial in Britain.

McKinnon’s mother Janis Sharp – who has campaigned vigorously for her son – thanked May for having “the guts” to block the extradition and said her son was “incredibly emotional” at the decision.

He was arrested in London in 2002 for hacking into dozens of Pentagon and Nasa computers, leaving 300 machines at a naval air station immobilised just after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

McKinnon has never denied the hacking, claiming he was looking for classified US documents on UFOs.

He could have faced up to 60 years in a US jail for the breaches, which the US says caused $800,000 (€615,000) worth of damage.

The hacker, who has become a symbol of the campaign to revamp Britain’s extradition deal with the US, lost appeals in Britain’s House of Lords and the European Court of Human Rights during his decade-long fight.

McKinnon was diagnosed with Asperger’s, a form of autism, in 2007, after an expert on the condition watched him in a television interview and contacted the hacker’s lawyer.

In an emotional press conference in London, his mother said she was “overwhelmed”.