UFO-obsessed British hacker faces life behind bars in US

Unidentified Flying Objects have been a source of fascination for years but Gary McKinnon took his obsession too far.

Glasgow computer whiz McKinnon claimed he was so curious about UFOs, he could not resist hacking into the US Government to search for clues that could unlock the mystery.

Now he faces the heavy price of life behind bars for gaining access to 97 American military and Nasa computers from his London home.

Today, he lost his appeal to the Law Lords against an order for his extradition to the US.

The an unemployed 42-year-old, faces up to 70 years in prison if convicted in the US of sabotaging vital defence systems.

The House of Lords rejected the plea by McKinnon to quash the extradition request granted to the US authorities in 2006.

Lawyers for McKinnon, from Enfield, north London, pointed out that he could be sent to Guantanamo Bay as a terrorist suspect - despite his insistence that he accessed Pentagon computers looking for information about UFOs.

But despite his sobering example, UFO fever is likely to hit the UK again with the arrival of the new X Files film, which premieres in London today.

There have already been a flurry of UFO sightings, particularly in western parts of the British Isles, further fuelling the debate.

Just this weekend, a Devon couple said they saw a UFO over Dartmoor National Park.

Wayne and Jo Taylor, from Ashburton, said they spotted a formation of a dozen slow-moving circular lights in the sky on Saturday night.

Mr Taylor, 40, said that at one point the lights moved at a 90-degree angle, adding: "I have never seen anything like it."

In Welton, Lincolnshire, a white orb-shaped object was spotted on June 23.

Figures from the that region show that over the last 16 months six reported UFO sightings have been submitted.

At the beginning of July a West Country UFO sighting terrified a small suburb in the region.

However, the "orange lights" that convinced residents that UFOs were overhead could simply have been Chinese sky lanterns released by a nearby junior school.

At just after 10.30pm on June 28, people making their way home to Charlton Kings in Cheltenham saw unexplained luminous cylinders in the sky.

Sandra Lloyd, 59, saw the lights as she was driving home from a family meal and dismissed the theory that they were paper lanterns released by a local junior school that evening to celebrate its centenary.

She told the Gloucestershire Echo: "There were about 12 bright lights that were moving and not making a sound. I thought they were aircraft or helicopters but they were too close and there was no sound. They certainly did not look like lanterns."

Tom O'Loughlin, 14, from St Peter's Square, was cycling in the area when he saw the lights.

He said: "There was a formation of lights travelling across the sky.

"They were disappearing and then appearing again. I was quite scared. It's not something you see every day.

"We watched them for 15 minutes. There were loads of people in town watching them."

In early June the Ministry of Defence faced calls to launch an official inquiry into a series of UFO sightings, some of which UFO experts believe had happened in Shropshire, south Wales and Worcestershire throughout the month.

With the MoD under pressure to investigate these claims and the release of the The X Files film, speculation over the existence of unusual aircraft is rife in the UK.

On June 25 the MoD confirmed that it had been given footage taken on a mobile phone by a corporal guard on duty at Tern Hill barracks, near Market Drayton, Shropshire on June 7.

Corporal Mark Proctor, 38, told The Sun: "I was on duty in the guard room when the other boys outside began shouting.

"I went out to see what the commotion was about and could see 13 craft in the skies. They were like rotating cubes with multiple colours."

The calls for an inquiry came only a couple of weeks after a South Wales Police helicopter was apparently buzzed by a UFO and had to swerve sharply to avoid being hit.

The sighting took place when the three-man crew in the aircraft were hovering in the sky above RAF St Athan, a military base outside Cardiff, at around 12.40am on June 8 waiting to land.

A police spokeswoman confirmed that the sighting was an "unusual aircraft" but did not use the term UFO.

In May, details were released that internal Ministry staff witnessed UFOs.

Sightings of alien craft over Wallasey Town Hall and a saucer-shaped Unidentified Flying Object hovering over Waterloo Bridge were recorded by MoD staff in the 1980s.

The details of the sightings were opened to the public this year after a Freedom of Information request by UFO researchers.

While the files show that MoD personnel did witness unidentified aircraft, a memo written in 1983 shows that they were not logged for inquiries into alien life but as an account for "defence interest".

The memo also said: "The Ministry of Defence does not deny that there are strange things to see in the sky."

In June this year former Ministry of Defence UFO researcher Nick Pope said that an official inquiry to establish what had happened was vital.

He said: "Something quite extraordinary does seem to be going on in British airspace at the moment.

"There has got to be an official inquiry into all this and we need a senior air force officer to take personal charge and oversee the inquiry."

An Army spokesperson declined to comment in detail on the sightings at Tern Hill.

"The MoD examines reports solely to establish whether UK airspace may have been compromised by hostile or unauthorised military activity," the spokesman said.

"Unless there is evidence of a potential threat, there is no attempt to identify the nature of each sighting reported."

UFO enthusiasts will remember the Roswell incident of 1947, in which the US government is believed by theorists to have concealed the wreckage of an alien craft that crash-landed in New Mexico.

A "Welsh Roswell" is also said to have taken place in the Berwyn Mountains in in Llandrillo, North Wales in 1974.

Individuals in the area at the time are still coming forward to give evidence for a Channel 5 documentary concerning the event, now known as the Berwyn Mountain Incident.

The incident, which is said to have involved strange lights in the sky, odd tremors and unusual men sweeping the countryside for information, is believed by some to have mirrored the Roswell incident almost 30 years previously and was concealed by the government.

Perhaps the most famous UFO-related episode in Britain is the Rendlesham Forest incident of 1980, which is often referred to as the "English Roswell".

Located around eight miles from Ipswich in Suffolk, Rendlesham Forest, it is claimed, played host to a series of UFOs, flashing lights and strange creatures over the course of December 1980.

Two RAF patrol men also claimed to have seen and photographed a UFO that landed in the forest but with no concrete evidence to back up the allegation it has never been proved, leading some groups to claim it is a government cover-up.

Other factions of UFO proponents also argue that Area 51, a secret military facility about 90 miles north of Las Vegas, is used by the US authorities to conceal alien encounters.

Also known as Groom Lake, the Nevada airbase has allegedly been used to investigate crashed alien craft and the development of energy weapons.

Despite years of discussion, theories and sightings, experts remain sceptical that "little green men" are visiting the Earth in flying saucers.

Mr Pope worked with the Ministry of Defence for 21 years and investigated sightings.

When MoD files were released to the public, he said: "While there's no evidence of little green men in these (MoD) files, they should be of immense interest to sceptics and believers.

"Most of the UFO sightings here are probably misidentifications of aircraft lights and meteors, but some are more difficult to explain, and include UFOs seen by police officers and pilots, and cases where UFOs have been tracked on radar."