DIPLO WIFE ON NOTICE
Interpol seeks arrest of UK teen’s US ‘killer’
Interpol has issued a “red notice” seeking the arrest of an American diplomat’s wife accused of killing a teenage motorcyclist while driving on the wrong side of the road in England last year, according to reports Monday.
The family of victim Harry Dunn was notified in an e-mail from cops that Anne Sacoolas, a reported exCIA spy, was “wanted internationally,” British news outlets reported.
The e-mail reportedly added that “should she leave the USA the wanted circulations should be enacted.”
Dunn’s grieving mother, Charlotte Charles, called the development “important news” and urged Sacoolas “to come back to the UK and do the right thing.”
“Face justice and maybe then our two families can come together after the tragedy and build a bridge,” she added.
Radd Seiger, a spokesperson for Dunn’s family, wrote on Twitter that Interpol’s move meant that Sacoolas “did not have diplomatic immunity at the time of #harry-dunn’s death and would be arrested [should] she attempt to leave the USA.”
Seiger also blasted the British Foreign Office for agreeing with American assertions that Sacoolas had diplomatic immunity, telling the Guardian that the matter should be decided in court.
“It is a monumental scandal,” Seiger said. “Parliament must now launch a full-scale inquiry into what happened.”
Sacoolas, 42, claimed diplomatic immunity and returned to the United States — reportedly on a US Air Force jet — following the Aug. 27, 2019, crash that killed Dunn, 19, in Northamptonshire.
American officials have identified her as “the spouse of an accredited diplomat to the United Kingdom” and therefore entitled to “immunity from criminal jurisdiction.”
British news outlets have said her husband is an intelligence official who at the time was stationed at RAF Croughton, a military base about 70 miles northwest of London, where the US runs a massive intelligence-gathering operation.
Sacoolas was allegedly driving on the wrong side of the road when she smashed her Volvo into Dunn’s motorcycle near the base.
The mother of three reportedly had one of her kids, 12, in the vehicle with her at the time.
Dunn’s mother and father, Tim Dunn, traveled to New York and publicly pleaded for Sacoolas to return to England to face prosecution, but that request was ignored.
In December, Sacoolas was charged in absentia with causing death by dangerous driving.
State Department officials said they were “disappointed” by the move and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo later denied an extradition request from the UK.
“If the United States were to grant the UK’s extradition request, it would render the invocation of diplomatic immunity a practical nullity and would set an extraordinarily troubling precedent,” a State Department spokesperson said at the time.
A red notice is not an arrest warrant but is issued by Interpol at the request of a member country to notify others that someone is wanted for arrest and extradition.
When asked if Britain asked for the red notice, a spokesperson for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said only that the British government wanted Sacoolas to return to the United Kingdom for prosecution, according to a report from Voice of America.