On November 24, the family of the late British youth Harry Dunn lost a lawsuit concerning whether the wife of an American agent enjoys diplomatic immunity. Last year, Anne Saculas, wife of Jonathan, an American diplomat, crashed and killed Harry Dunn, a young British man, and “escaped” from Britain while driving backwards.
According to previous media reports, at 8:30 p.m. local time on August 27, 2019, Saculas drove head-on into Harry Dunn, a British young man riding a motorcycle outside a U.S. air base in central England.
Dunn, who was 19 years old, died in hospital. Police confirmed that the car driven by Sakolas was retrograde at that time of the incident, her 12-year-old son was also in the car. Within weeks of the accident, the Sakulas family “escaped” from Britain.
According to the Associated Press, officials said that Sakuras was entitled to diplomatic immunity because her husband worked at the United States air force base.
Sacuras, 43, was charged with the death of others in December 2019, but the U.S. State Department rejected her request to extradite her to the United Kingdom for trial.
Dunn’s parents, Charlotte Charles and Tim Dunn, filed a lawsuit for the British Foreign Office wrongly ruled that Saculas had diplomatic immunity and illegally obstructed the police from investigating the cause of their son’s death.
Their attorney also said that Sacuras himself “has no position at the United States air force base”.
But two British judges ruled yesterday that Sacuras had diplomatic immunity “on the time she arrived in Britain” under the Vienna Convention on Foreign Relations, and that she “held immunity from British criminal jurisdiction at the time of Harry’s death”.
Harry Dunn’s mother said she was determined to continue to justice for her son.
A spokesman for the Dunn family said they would appeal the judgment.
Dominic Raab, the British Foreign Secretary, said he supported Dunn’s family.
“We are very clear that Anne Saculas needs to be sanctioned in the UK and we will support her family in making legal claims in the United States,”
