{"id":329435,"date":"2025-12-03T16:53:26","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T16:53:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/uncategorized\/foreign-office-lost-opportunities-to-influence-us-after-harry-dunn-death-review-finds-foreign-policy\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T16:53:26","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T16:53:26","slug":"foreign-office-lost-opportunities-to-influence-us-after-harry-dunn-death-review-finds-foreign-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=329435","title":{"rendered":"Foreign Office lost \u2018opportunities to influence\u2019 US after Harry Dunn death, review finds | Foreign policy"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Foreign Office failures led to opportunities being missed to achieve justice for the family of Harry Dunn, killed in August 2019 in a motorcycle crash outside a US airbase, an independent review commissioned by the Labour government has found.<\/p>\n

Dame Anne Owers, who led the review, said: \u201cMinisters and senior officials were not involved early enough, and this meant that opportunities were lost to influence \u2013 rather than respond to \u2013 events.<\/p>\n

\u201cDirect communication with the family was late and sporadic, and the Foreign Office was slow to realise that they were allies in achieving justice and securing positive change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dunn was killed aged 19<\/a> when he was hit by a car driven on the wrong side of the road by Anne Sacoolas, the wife of a US state department official based at RAF Croughton. Sacoolas, a US citizen, had been in the country for three weeks, and admitted responsibility.<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>Charlotte Charles and Tim Dunn, Harry Dunn\u2019s parents, say the review makes for difficult reading.<\/span> Photograph: Phil Barnett\/PA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Within days, Sacoolas was allowed to leave the country under a technicality that she was immune from criminal prosecution, even though a 1995 agreement between the US and the UK waived immunity for all directly employed staff at the base.<\/p>\n

The US told the Foreign Office within three days of the accident that the immunity waiver did not apply to dependents of US diplomats, and a month later Sacoolas and her family were withdrawn from the UK and returned to the US.<\/p>\n

But the UK foreign secretary at the time, Dominic Raab<\/a>, was not informed of the dispute over immunity until the day after Sacoolas had left the country to avoid any risk of prosecution.<\/p>\n

Foreign Office officials also did not inform the Northamptonshire<\/a> police force of the doubts about her immunity until the same day. Dunn\u2019s family were not informed by the police of Sacoolas\u2019 departure until 26 September, nearly a month after his death, by which time they had, through their own sources, worked out she had fled the UK.<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>Dunn was 19 years old when he was killed.<\/span> Photograph: Family Handout\/PA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Owers report says: \u201cIt is clear that there was shock, frustration and exasperation at the US\u2019s decision to refuse to waive immunity. It was considered that the US was exploiting a loophole in the Croughton Agreement, in a way that had never been intended by the drafters, and which resulted in the anomaly that Sacoolas, as a dependant, had immunity that her husband, the principal, lacked.\u201d<\/p>\n

And it found it extraordinary that there was such \u201ca significant delay\u201d in the case being elevated within the Foreign Office so serious senior representations could have been made to the US embassy that the UK disapproved of the US\u2019s intentions.<\/p>\n

Owers said the decision by Foreign Office to tell the US government they should \u201cfeel able\u201d to put state department employee Sacoolas on the next flight home \u201creflected a reluctant recognition of the US\u2019s decision, rather than agreement with it\u201d.<\/p>\n

The review also found the Foreign Office and the police created distrust by refusing to take the Dunn family into their confidence earlier. \u201cIt would have been possible to explain to the family at an early stage that there were complex issues of diplomatic immunity which were still being explored, and the possible outcomes, without destabilising the significant diplomatic efforts being made,\u201d it reads.<\/p>\n

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