Raab faces clash over Dunn case ‘secrecy’
FOREIGN Secretary Dominic Raab faces embarrassing court room disclosures this week as he battles to keep his handling of the Harry Dunn case secret.
Mr Raab and Foreign Office officials are fighting a legal challenge from the family of the 19-year-old motorcyclist who was killed in a crash with former US spy Anne Sacoolas last August. She fled Britain, claiming diplomatic immunity. The FO’s decision that Ms Sacoolas, 42, was above the law is subject to a judicial review.
The Dunn family’s legal team will face Government lawyers in the High Court for the first time on Thursday, as they seek a judge’s order for the FO to hand over potentially devastating documents and emails concerning its handling of the affair.
Ahead of the case, Mr Raab wrote to Harry’s parents to claim he had no idea that Ms Sacoolas had fled the country until after she had returned to the US last September, despite his officials telling the US Embassy it should ‘feel free’ to put her on the next plane after the crash.
But last night Harry’s family poured scorn on the claim after revelations in The Mail on Sunday that Mr Raab’s private office was made fully aware in writing of the situation and diplomatic complications on August 30 last year, three days after the crash outside RAF Croughton in Northamptonshire, a US spy base.
Family spokesman Radd Seiger accused the FO of being in a ‘total state of disarray’, adding: ‘It is utterly inconceivable that Mr Raab was unaware of Harry until after Mrs Sacoolas had gone.’
Harry’s mother, Charlotte Charles, said: ‘Why has the FO left it to the 11th hour to say the captain of the ship was off somewhere else while the ship was burning?’