Lulzsec hacker indicted in the US

The US has indicted Ryan Cleary, who was arrested in the UK last year and charged with five offences under the Criminal Law Act and Computer Misuse Act. He has been charged by a grand jury in Los Angeles with one count of conspiracy and two counts of unauthorized impairment of protected computers. Cleary is alleged to belong to the hacker collective LulzSec.

The 20 year old was not able to attend the hearing in court as he is currently remanded in custody in the UK for breaking his bail conditions. Arrested in June of 2011, he was then charged with offences relating to the construction of botnets with the intention of creating distributed denial of service attacks ( DDOS ).

If extradited to the US and convicted, Cleary could face a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison. FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said that they would "allow the prosecution to take its course" in the UK before deciding whether to apply for extradition. It is also reported that Cleary, according to his solicitor, suffers from Asperger's syndrome, and that therefore "extradition to the United States is totally undesirable". Cleary is next scheduled to be in a UK court on 25 July.