From the US point of view, all alien administrations are suspect and incapable of administering justice so the US reaction will always be to recover their citizens from alien regimes.
There are instances when diplomatic immunity is essential, but this is not one of them. In most cases you are right. I only had it for specific tasks and none of those tasks was likely to hurt anybody. Had I hurt anybody I would have been answerable to the local authorities. Not stopping after a car accident is unforgivable in my book, but that may not be what happened in this instance.
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The police were going to the USA last week to conduct an interview under caution.
Has anybody seen an update ?
The last I read, they were “waiting for their visas”.
Best
David
I completely agree, but I don’t think this was the case here. As far as I am aware, she did stop and spoke to the police at the scene.
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The local press is still referring to this in the future tense, i.e. they have not gone to US or have gone & are not making it public.
The police have said “A file of evidence has been handed to the Crown Prosecution Service but…that file is incomplete - you can’t complete the file until you have an account from the suspect.”
It does seem the family & the police are in dispute as the family said “… lost all faith and confidence in both the police and the Foreign Office”. & are referred the police to the Independent Office for Police Conduct.
Police have urged the Dunn family’s spokesman Radd Seiger “to exercise constraint in his commentary because it is not helpful”.
I can understand the families desire to get this sorted, but it seems there are too many separate lines
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Thank you Mike, makes sense.
I get the feeling that the family is pushing too hard. OTOH, the police and Home Office do seem to have been less than candid in their efforts to secure justice.
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DI exists not for spats like these between friendly countries, but to protect all levels of staff serving in countries that aren’t so enthusiastic about the rule of law & investigating the actual commission of a crime. There are plenty of countries in parts of the world that would find it nicely beneficial to finger lowly members of staff in a convenient emabssy over some imagined crime purely as leverage or as tit for tat. Dimplomatic Immunity goes some way to preventing this.
The fact that in this case we’re on the sharp end of a potential injustice through immunity is no reason to bin it and leave staff serving abroad open to the sort of behaviour that we like to imagine the UK and most western govts wouldn’t dream of engaging in.
The Dunn family were invited to the White House, and unbeknownst to them, the driver was in an adjacent room and President Trump was trying to coax a meeting between the two under the spotlight of cameras. Insensitive, to say the least.
Aren, I think David was refering to the UK Police who were planning to interview the Lady in question, in the USA under caution.
Yes, sorry, I didn’t mean to reply directly to David.
It doesn’t matter. It’s kind of like who one might have been looking at as we chatted together…
Should the driver ever elect to visit another nation with an extradition agreement in place with the UK, can she be arrested at the point of entry?
The death of the Brit was another casuality of war, this time the inteliigence war.
If a US war plane crashes in the UK killing some Brits and the pilot ejects to safety, is the pilot hauled into court on a murder charge? This case is very little different.
The Dunn family should go for a huge financial compensation plus lifetime visa to the US and remember their son.
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The young chap died because there was an incompetent driver at the wheel.
I concur - if you are aware there has been an accident you must stop and assess for damage/injury.
I got a new car in 2006 and on my first journey a dog ran out onto the road on a country lane, I braked but the dog collided with the bumper and ran off.
I stopped and found the sheepish owners across the road - the dog bounded back, seemed ok but I advised them to use an emergency veterinary service and gave the name of a highly respected local one, I have no idea what happened to the dog.
I went to the local police station and advised them of the accident - the response was ‘why did you bother, it was only a dog?’ which is bizarre as we are obliged to report accidents involving certain animals.
‘Did you get their address?’ asked the desk officer, I told them I hadn’t (they didn’t give any details) as I was simply concerned about the dog and also documenting the accident. ‘Shame that, we’d have tried to prosecute them for not having the dog under control’, he replied - at the time I was a bit shocked by the ‘figures’ response when my primary concern was for the dog, and ha dthe owners not appeared I’d have taken it to the vets myself. In hindisght however, I was possibly fortunate as I could have skidded and crashed, but there was no harm to me or the car, and what purpose would would have been served by prosecuting the dog owners for a freak accident?
I’ve had that sense too, and I kicked myself for thinking it - they have every right to look at all legal avenues open to them - they’ve lost a child, and whether or not ‘compo’ as well as justice is their goal is irrelevant.
I can imagine this might turn out to be a very important case in terms of case law in relation to diplomatic immunity.
It looks very much like a charge of causing" Death By Careless Driving" defined by the sentencing council as
This is the body that sets the tariff , everything else is irrelevant
Sad thing is that people rant and rave at judges but these are the people that set and define the law
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As I understand it, she didn’t actually have diplomatic immunity. Her husband wasn’t a diplomat. He was an intelligence official and she worked on the base, but not as a diplomat. Also as they lived on the base, when she was driving outside the base, the journey wasn’t either on duty or driving from work to home and so even if she did have diplomatic immunity, it wouldn’t have covered the journey when she had the accident.
It’s all very unfortunate, both for her and for the young man she accidentally killed.
But it’s nothing to do with diplomatic immunity.
Best
David
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I believe the husband had the right of diplomatic immunity.
According to this article, “Sources close to the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the prime minister’s office however, told Insider that Jonathan Sacoolas had the right to diplomatic immunity.”
But this does not excuse the family’s decision to bail the country and not meet their moral obligation to deal with the situation.
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