Harry Dunn: US rejects extradition request for Anne Sacoolas
The US has rejected an extradition request for Anne Sacoolas from the Home Office after she was charged with causing death by dangerous driving by the Crown Prosecution Service.
Harry Dunn, 19, was killed following a crash in Northamptonshire last August which led to Sacoolas, the wife of a US intelligence officer, returning to America under diplomatic immunity.
The Home Office said the decision appeared “to be a denial of justice”.
Family spokesman Radd Seiger said the rejection “factored it into our planning and strategy” and that they had taken the news “in our stride”.
“The reality is that this administration, which we say is behaving lawlessly and taking a wrecking ball to one of the greatest alliances in the world, they won’t be around forever whereas that extradition request will be,” he told the BBC.
“We will simply plot and plan for a reasonable administration to come in one day and to reverse this decision.”
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo rejected the UK’s extradition request in an email to the UK Government on Thursday evening.
A statement from the US State Department said accepting the request would “render the invocation of diplomatic immunity a practical nullity”.
Andrea Leadsom, who is the MP for Dunn’s family’s constituency of south Northamptonshire, will meet with US ambassador Woody Johnson in London later today to discuss the case.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson had previously said the chance of Sacoolas ever returning to the UK was very low.
Seiger added: “It’s one of the darkest days in the history of this special relationship.”
“Boris Johnson wanted to be prime minister, he is now being tested severely.
“I expect him today to rise to that challenge and come and meet with me and the family and tell us what he’s going to do about it.”
Dunn died after his motorbike was in a collision with a car owned by Sacoolas, 42, who is alleged to have been driving on the wrong side of the road.
The crash happened outside RAF Croughton where Sacoolas’ husband Jonathan worked as an intelligence officer.
A spokeswoman for the Home Office added: “We are urgently considering our options.”