Pardon for UK wartime code cracker

Alan Turing is credited with helping Britain win World War Two by cracking Nazi Germany's apparently unbreakable military communication code.

Yet after the war he was fired, chemically castrated and eventually took his own life following a conviction for gay sex.

Now, nearly 60 years later, the man whose work is said to have shortened the war has been given a royal pardon.

Britain's justice minister welcomed the decision.

(SOUNDBITE)(English) CHRIS GRAYLING, BRITISH JUSTICE MINISTER, SAYING:

"He could have done so much more after the Second World War, in the years of the Cold War. He's seen as the father of the modern computer and yet his life ended in disgrace in circumstances today which we find to be extraordinary and horrible."

The pardon from the Queen was granted at the government's request.

Only four royal pardons have ever been granted since the end of World War Two.