US wife ‘must return to UK over fatal crash’
THE US diplomat’s wife who left the UK after a fatal crash with a British teenager was named last night.
Anne Sacoolas, 42, is the woman who claimed diplomatic immunity after a head-on collision with motorcyclist Harry Dunn, 19, Sky News said.
She allegedly careered into Mr Dunn while driving on the wrong side of the road on the brow of a hill near RAF Croughton, Northants, on Aug 27.
Her 12-year-old son was in the passenger seat, The Daily Telegraph understands. In the immediate aftermath, she got out of the car and admitted lia- bility, sources suggest. But the following day, when police visited her home at Croughton, which is being used as a US intelligence base, to inform her the teenager had died in hospital, lawyers and embassy officials stepped in.
Mrs Sacoolas, who had been in the UK for just three weeks, was identified as the driver last night as a chief constable urged the US to return her to the UK. Nick Adderley, the most senior officer in the Northamptonshire force, wrote “in the strongest terms” to the US embassy in London, urging that the diplomatic immunity waiver be applied “in order to allow the justice process to take place”.
It followed a growing clamour for the US to intervene as Mr Dunn’s parents said they were “trapped in a living nightmare”. Mrs Sacoolas’s diplomatic immunity is governed by an international treaty signed in 1961 called the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the Diplomatic Privileges Act 1964.
Members of an embassy or other mission staff can avoid a police investigation or prosecution if they commit a crime, or can avoid the need to defend themselves in a civil suit.
For them to face justice in their host country, the country that employs them has to waive their diplomatic immunity. Dependants of diplomats can be granted immunity in the UK with the Foreign Office’s consent. Mr Adderley yesterday said that he and Stephen Mold, Northamptonshire’s police and crime commissioner, had written to the US embassy in London.
Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, urged Woody Johnson, the US ambassador, to grant a waiver of immunity, which was declined. The US state department said a waiver had received “careful attention at senior levels” but said they were rarely granted.
Andrea Leadsom, the Business Secretary and the family’s MP in South Northamptonshire, has met Mr Dunn’s parents and vowed to do everything in her power to get justice.
Diplomatic immunity is an important protection for those serving their country abroad that, as a principle, dates back thousands of years. It ensures safe passage for emissaries and defends them from prosecution or other action under the host’s laws. No government would waive it save in the most exceptional circumstances. But its integrity necessarily relies upon the good faith of those who avail themselves of its protections. Where that is not apparent, then thought must be given to removing them.
This is where the Americans currently find themselves after the death of Harry Dunn, 19, who was killed when his motorbike collided with a car allegedly driven by the wife of a US diplomat in Britain.
Under Article 37 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, the immunity conferred on emissaries extends also to their families. The police said the woman, identified last night as Anne Sacoolas, 42, co-operated fully after the incident but then returned to America before inquiries were complete, despite giving no indication of her intention to do so. The distraught parents of the dead teenager are understandably upset by this turn of events, and Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, has made a formal request to Washington to waive the immunity so Ms Sacoolas can be extradited. This has happened before, in 2003, when Colombia allowed one of its diplomats to be tried for manslaughter. He was acquitted.
Since no evidence has yet been adduced in this case about the extent to which the fatality was the woman’s fault, it seems highly unlikely that America will accede to Britain’s request. However, common decency requires that she should examine her conscience and recognise that, for the sake of the dead teenager’s family, the investigation should be allowed to run its proper course and she should return to the UK for further questioning.