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The family of Harry Dunn, the 19-year-old motorcyclist killed outside an American air base, has started their court case seeking a decision that the Foreign Office acted illegally by granting diplomatic immunity to the American driver of the car that killed him. .
Dunn was killed when his motorcycle collided with a car Anne Sacoolas was driving on the wrong side of the road on the outskirts of RAF Croughton in Northamptonshire on August 27 last year.
Sacoolas, whose husband, Jonathan Sacoolas, worked as a technical assistant at the base, left the country two weeks after the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) accepted a US claim that Sacoolas had immunity on the grounds that her husband worked at RAF Croughton, a CIA listening post in Northamptonshire.
Subsequent efforts by the UK government to request his extradition have been rejected by the US State Department.
The immunity claim is based on a secret agreement signed between the UK and the US that granted immunity to personnel working at RAF Croughton, but only for activities related to their work. Silence was kept on the immunity status of the staff’s families.
The Foreign Office and the US State Department interpreted the silence in the agreement as total immunity for families. Attorneys acting on behalf of Dunn’s family claim that it is a perverse interpretation of the agreement to suggest that the US base staff members had less diplomatic immunity than his family.
The FCDO argued that the silence in the secret agreement on the status of the staff’s families was an anomaly, but nevertheless gave these relatives immunity. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab later announced that “the US waiver of immunity from criminal jurisdiction is now expressly extended to the relatives of US personnel” at the base, “ending the anomaly of the previous arrangements.” .
The Crown Prosecutor’s Office has charged Sacoolas with death from dangerous driving and has requested his extradition.
Lawyers representing the Dunn family argue that the FCDO violated human rights law by warning Northamptonshire police that Sacoolas had immunity and then hiding key facts from police, including his impending departure from the UK.
Sacoolas has acknowledged that he was driving on the wrong side of the road when he collided with Dunn. He had only been in the UK for a few weeks when the collision occurred.
The two-day remote video link judicial review is in front of Lord Justice Flaux and Justice Saini.
On behalf of the family, Geoffrey Robertson QC said: “Since the family members are not members of the mission and have no obligations, Anne Sacoolas was never entitled to any immunity derived or implied from criminal jurisdiction.”
He added that it would be “absurd” for family members to have “greater privileges and immunities” than RAF Croughton personnel “from whom their immunity flows.”
In written communications, FCDO attorney Sir James Eadie QC said: “As a matter of international and national law, Ms. Sacoolas automatically had diplomatic immunity as the spouse of a member of the technical and administrative staff of the United States mission. “.
He argued that the FCDO “clearly did not obstruct the police investigation”, adding: “On the contrary, the secretary of state tried to assist in the police investigation, including requesting a waiver of Ms. Sacoolas’ immunity.”
Sir James told the court that the United States “expressly waived immunity from the criminal jurisdiction of the United Kingdom of ’employees’ or ‘members of the staff’, but that“ at no time is there a waiver of the immunity enjoyed by families of those people ”. But Roberston argued that the FCDO “assumed the authority to resolve the issue of immunity and ultimately and illegally decided to accept the decision of the US embassy that Anne Sacoolas had immunity.”
He said in written communications that the decision “obstructed the police by preventing any effective progress in their investigation into Harry’s death and the likely prosecution of Anne Sacoolas.”
Robertson argued that the FCDO “tacitly agreed to the departure of the Sacoolas family from the UK,” referring to a text message sent to a US embassy official on September 14, 2019, the day before Sacoolas and his family left. the United Kingdom.
The message read: “I think the decision has now been made not to resign [immunity], there’s not much of a mile we ask you to keep the family here.
“We obviously don’t approve of their departure, but I think I should be able to put them on the next flight.”
