US government ‘kicked Harry Dunn’s family in stomach’ after teenager killed
Washington condemned for shielding Anne Sacoolas from UK courts, forcing family to fight for three years
The family of a British teenager killed by a US diplomat’s wife has condemned the American government after it took three years to get justice.
On Thursday, US citizen Anne Sacoolas was sentenced for killing Harry Dunn in a car crash in England in 2019.
Speaking after Sacoolas was spared jail at an Old Bailey hearing, Mr Dunn’s mother Charlotte Charles said she was “absolutely disgusted” by Washington’s handling of the case.
“How can they treat people like this?” she asked after the 47-year-old was allowed to remain in the US while a British judge handed her an eight-month suspended sentence.
Ms Justice Cheema-Grubb said the US government did not “in any way support Mrs Sacoolas’s appearing in person”, and she had received a statement which said: “Her return could place significant US interests at risk.”
Speaking outside the Old Bailey, Dunn family spokesman Radd Seiger said: “Our real enemy here is not Mrs Sacoolas ... Our real enemy here is the US government, who after Harry’s death instead of coming to do the right thing for his family decided to kick them in the stomach.
“If it weren’t for friends, their community, you guys in the media and the Great British and American public ... they would have got away with it.
“The cowardly approach to seeing justice is done here is appalling and I don’t understand why the Americans have behaved this way.”
Dunn was killed while riding a motorbike near RAF Croughton at night on 19 August 2019 when Sacoolas crashed into him while driving on the wrong side of the road.
Sacoolas was working for a US intelligence agency at the time and the US embassy told the UK Foreign Office that she was covered by diplomatic immunity meaning she would not face prosecution over his death.
Washington said Sacoolas would be leaving the UK on 13 September 2019 and cited a 1995 “Exchange of Notes“between the UK and the US on diplomatic immunity, which was claimed to free Sacoolas from British jurisdiction as the spouse of a worker at the air base.
Sir Tony Baldry, who was a junior Foreign Office minister when the documents were drawn up, said he was “horrified” when the US suggested there was a “loophole”.
“I don’t think it was ever intended, I’m quite sure, when the Foreign Office legal team thought out the agreements, or agreed to the agreements, that you are covered by diplomatic immunity when you weren’t actually acting as a diplomat,” he said.
Foreign Secretary James Cleverly acknowledged that “important lessons” had been learned from the incident, “including improvements to the process around exemptions from diplomatic immunity”.
Additional reporting by Press Association