Foreign Office review decision to allow Harry Dunn’s suspected killer to flee home to America
Foreign Office accepted US opinion days after Dunn was killed
‘Agreement made at the end of last century’ SIR SIMON McDONALD
The Government let Anne Sacoolas, the woman charged with killing 19-year-old Harry Dunn, return to the US because of an “apparently illogical” reading of the diplomatic immunity laws according to the Foreign Office’s most senior civil servant.
The statement by Sir Simon McDonald, the Permanent UnderSecretary and Head of the Diplomatic Service, was given to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee and will galvanise the Dunn family’s hopes of mounting a judicial review into the way the Foreign Office handled the case. Sacoolas is accused of causing death by reckless driving, but immediately after the accident she claimed diplomatic immunity as the wife of a CIA agent working at RAF
Croughton. She was allowed to return to the US but the Crown Prosecution Service has subsequently charged her. The US Government has refused the extradition request.
It has emerged that Foreign Office lawyers discussed her status with the US State Department and accepted their reading of the law, despite advising British ministers there was legal ambiguity about her standing. Speaking to the Select Committee, McDonald said: “In the case of Harry Dunn, the controversy was over an agreement made at the end of the last century over continuing immunities for US diplomats at the Croughton annex. “In that agreement the American authorities gave a pre-waiver for accredited diplomats so that was the formal position, but that agreement was silent on the rights of their dependents, and that has been the origin of a lot of the dispute. But our legal advice is that when an agreement is silent on something, then what pertained before still applies – i.e. Immunity.”
McDonald told committee members the interpretation was “illogical” because the lawyers had decided that even though the immunity of the diplomat working at the base had been waived by the US in the agreement, that of the dependent had not. The result is that his wife supposedly enjoyed greater immunity than he did. A subsequent review has concluded this is anomalous and the UK is now seeking to rewrite the agreement.