Fleeing death driver 'should have been treated as a crisis

The Foreign Office failed to treat as a crisis the case of an American woman who fled the country claiming diplomatic immunity after causing the death of a British teenager in a road crash, an independent review has concluded.

- JANE DALTON

David Lammy, when he was foreign secretary in July, launched a review of how the case of Anne Sacoolas - then a suspect - was dealt with.

Dunn, 19, was killed when a car driven by Sacoolas hit his motorcycle near the exit to RAF Croughton in Northamptonshire in August 2019. She was driving on the wrong side of the road.

Sacoolas, the wife of a CIA operative working near the airbase, claimed diplomatic immunity under a legal loophole unknown at the time to most politicians and the police officers who first questioned her. Anne Owers, a former chief inspector of prisons, who carried out the review, highlights in her report "failings and omissions" in the Foreign Office when dealing with the case, including failing to recognise the family as allies in achieving justice.