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The Foreign Office failed to treat the Harry Dunn case as a crisis and lost “opportunities to influence” the US after diplomatic immunity was asserted on behalf of the suspect, an independent review has concluded.
David Lammy officially launched the review into the case in July, when he was foreign secretary. The report’s author, Dame Anne Owers, highlighted “failings and omissions” in the department when dealing with Harry’s death in August 2019.
It is understood Owers told the Dunn family it was her “strong view” that Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary at the time of the incident, should have been involved “far earlier in the process”, with his private office being copied into a note three days after the crash expressing concern over potentially “unpalatable headlines”.
Harry’s mother, Charlotte Charles, and father, Tim Dunn, were critical of the Foreign Office in 2019, after senior officials told the US government they should “feel able” to put the US suspect Anne Sacoolas on the next flight home after the fatal road crash.
The US state department asserted diplomatic immunity on behalf of Sacoolas, who left the UK 19 days after the incident outside RAF Croughton in Northamptonshire.
The Dunn family spent three years campaigning for justice and met the US president, Donald Trump, in the White House.
Sacoolas eventually pleaded guilty to causing death by careless driving via video link at the Old Bailey in December 2022 and she later received an eight-month prison sentence, suspended for 12 months.
Reacting to the review, Charles said: “Reading her report has been a hugely emotional experience and has triggered a lot of anger, taking it back as it does to those early days after we lost Harry.
“Having turned to the authorities for help, we got nothing from them. The report confirms what we have lived with every day for more than six years, that mistakes were made, that opportunities were missed and that our family was not treated with the honesty or urgency that any grieving parent deserves.”
Owers said the decision by officials to tell the US government they should “feel able” to put Sacoolas, a state department employee, on the next flight home “reflected a reluctant recognition of the US’s decision, rather than agreement with it”.
Her report continued: “From the documentation I have seen, there is no doubt that those who were directly involved hoped and expected that the US would, as one put it, ‘do the right thing’, irrespective of any other considerations.
“But there was a significant delay in recognising that this should be a priority across the department as a whole, and in escalating it to a sufficiently senior level.”
Charles said the family “knew things weren’t right, which is why we campaigned with such force”.
She said: “For years we have carried the fear that Harry’s case was not taken seriously enough at the highest levels when it mattered most. Dame Anne’s findings show that those fears were justified. That is incredibly painful to hear, even now.
“Nothing will bring our beautiful Harry back, but today we feel seen, heard and believed. We knew things weren’t right, which is why we campaigned with such force.
“All we wanted when we asked for the inquiry was to ensure that no other family ever has to endure what we did.”
In her recommendations, Owers said deaths involving exceptional circumstances, such as diplomatic immunity, should now be given an “immediate surge of resources”, with a mandatory early escalation to ministers and senior officials.
The US government at the time of the incident were considered to have been “exploiting a loophole” in the immunity agreement at US air base RAF Croughton, which granted dependants of administrative and technical staff immunity but not the staff themselves.
