Today (11^th November) the judicial review hearing will begin. Owing to the COVID pandemic and the national lockdown our case is being heard remotely via video conferencing. The hearing will continue throughout Wednesday and Thursday this week. On the eve of the hearing, we wanted to provide you with a reminder of what this case is all about and why it is so important, and to thank you for supporting Harry's family in this action.

The background

Harry Dunn was killed on 27 August 2019 by Anne Sacoolas, the wife of an American intelligence officer who was working at the United States facility at RAF Croughton. Mrs Sacoolas was driving on the wrong side of the road when the vehicle she was driving collided with Harry who was riding his motorcycle in the opposite direction but on the correct side of the road.

Mrs Sacoolas confessed to Northants police that she was driving the car that killed Harry. Her US attorney has also accepted the same.

Over two weeks after the accident, on 15 September, the entire Sacoolas family fled the UK after a Foreign Office official texted a US diplomat saying they should feel free to “put her on the next plane”.

The Foreign Office kept the police who were investigating the accident in the dark about key issues, for example about a secret agreement relating to RAF Croughton which did not grant immunity to family members, and the fact that the Sacoolas family were about to leave the UK. The police officer in charge of the investigation has said in a statement to the court that if she had known the full facts she would have taken further steps to clarify the position on immunity.

In cases where there is a question about entitlement to Diplomatic Immunity, the proper approach is for a UK court to determine the claim to immunity. It is not within the purview of the FCO to decide such issues as to do so would usurp the function of the independent court process.

In Harry's case, the CPS later charged Anne Sacoolas with the criminal offence of Causing Death by Dangerous Driving. The UK requested her extradition but the USA have, to date, refused, with US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo saying (that in his opinion) it would be an “egregious abuse”.

What is the Judicial Review claim about?

Harry’s parents, Charlotte and Tim, have brought a Judicial Review against the Foreign Office asking the court to find that the way its officials behaved in the days and weeks after Harry died was unlawful. The ‘rolled up’ hearing (comprising a leave application and the substantive hearing) in the case will be heard over two days on 11-12 November by a “Divisional Court” comprising of two judges: Lord Justice Flaux and Mr Justice Saini.

In summary, the family’s case is:

First, that the Foreign Office were wrong to agree with the United States that Mrs Sacoolas had diplomatic immunity and to let her flee from justice in the UK. That is because under international law the secret agreement in place between the UK and USA relating to RAF Croughton did not grant immunity to family members of diplomats.

Second, the Foreign Office unlawfully advised the police that Mr and Mrs Sacoolas had diplomatic immunity in relation to the accident. It also unlawfully kept the police in the dark about key information such as the nature of the agreement between the UK and US and the fact that the Sacoolas family were about to leave the jurisdiction. By doing so, the Foreign Office usurped the police’s constitutional role to investigate crimes, and undermined the state’s duty to investigate deaths under human rights law. 

This is one of the most important international and public law cases of recent years. The family have instructed two Queen’s Counsel, Geoffrey Robertson QC and Sam Wordsworth QC, and four junior counsel, Adam Wagner, Sean Aughey, Monica Feria-Tinta and Emilie Gonin, to fight their case. The Foreign Office case will be presented by the government’s top lawyer, Sir James Eadie QC, leading a team of Professor Vaughan Lowe QC plus four junior counsel.

What can the Court do if the family are successful?

If the family are successful, the Court will decide that Anne Sacoolas did not have immunity at the time of the accident. The family hope that this will cause the new US administration to reverse its position on extraditing Anne Sacoolas. If the family win on the second part of the case, relating to the way the Foreign Office interacted with the police, this will have a huge impact on similar cases going forward and make it less likely that diplomats and their families will be able to evade accountability and justice in future.

We have our first hearing in the case this Thursday 18 June. It is a “disclosure” hearing which deals with what documents and information Dominic Raab has to provide to us and the court. We are extremely worried that Mr Raab has not complied with his ‘duty of candour’ - we suspect he is keeping documents from us because they would be damaging to the government.

We have good reason to suspect this; it took us six months of our lawyers sending letter after letter, and eventually having to make a formal request to the court, before the government started to release key details of what happened in the hours and weeks after Harry’s death. We were eventually given some of the pieces of the jigsaw, for example that the Foreign Office didn’t tell the police who were investigating Harry’s death that they thought Anne Sacoolas didn’t have immunity (they actually told the police she did have it!), that she was going to leave the country and that one of their officials even texted the Americans to say "you should feel able to put them on the next flight out”. The police were kept in the dark until after they had left - we think that was obstruction of justice.

But there are still key details missing, and believe it or not Dominic Raab has applied to the court for permission not to have to disclose relevant documents which he says will be ‘harmful to the public interest’. They relate to the real purpose of the secret agreement between the UK and US governments which 25 years ago gave hundreds of US intelligence staff at the Croughton base ‘diplomatic immunity’. We are worried that it is not our interests Mr Raab is protecting but the American Government’s

Mr Raab has blocked us at every stage which is why it has taken eight months and a huge amount of time and effort from our legal team to get to this stage. We think that once this hearing is done we should be able to get the full case heard within a few weeks, but even then there may be appeals. We will take this all the way to the Supreme Court if that’s what it takes to get justice for Harry.

Please do keep supporting the case as we are in the for the long haul - we know that the truth will out and we will get justice in the end. 

There have been some important developments in the case.

On Friday we received ‘detailed grounds of defence’ from the Foreign Office and Northamptonshire Police. Both continue to say they did nothing wrong. The Foreign Office still say they will claim costs against us if we lose even though we are just trying to get to the truth of what happened.

They have also each disclosed a number of documents that shed new light on the handling of Harry's death and Anne Sacoolas's claim to diplomatic immunity.

 Curiously, a few days before their defence was due we received a letter from the Foreign Office's lawyers asking us to confirm that we would not leak these documents. We now know why they were so nervous!

We have already uncovered significant and what our lawyers believe to be unlawful conduct, and it is becoming clear that the Foreign Secretary has never been entirely straight with the public over what happened in the days and weeks after Harry’s untimely death. We will provide more information when we are able to according to court rules.

A court hearing has been set for 2^nd April to deal with various preliminary matters including whether we can have access to key documentation. We anticipate that after that hearing we will be free to reveal the content of the documents disclosed so far.  

Importantly, we believe that key information and documents are still being withheld and we will ask the court to order the Foreign Office to disclose them.

 Please continue to support this important case so we can get to the truth about the events which followed Harry’s death.