NORTHAMPTONSHIRE (The Guardian) - The family of a British teenager killed when his motorbike was struck by a car driven by a US diplomat's wife have demanded to know whether the UK was told she was a former CIA officer and if this could have given her extra protection from extradition.
A spokesman for the family of Harry Dunn, who died in August in a crash near the Northamptonshire airbase where Anne Sacoolas's husband worked as an intelligence officer, said he would contact the family's local MP, Andrea Leadsom.
Radd Seiger said the family wanted to know if cabinet ministers had known of Sacoolas's reported previous status as a CIA operative, and whether this played a role in the US determination to reject the UK request for her extradition.
The family, despite numerous meetings with Foreign Office staff, was not told she had worked for the CIA, although it had been widely reported that her husband was a CIA operative at RAF Croughton.
The UK government has declined to comment on a report in the Mail on Sunday that Sacoolas had served as a senior CIA staff member, though she was not declared as such when she and her husband moved to the UK.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: "Anne Sacoolas was notified to us as a spouse with no official role." She had diplomatic immunity under her husband's role, which ended when she returned to the US.
Adam Wagner, one of the lawyers acting for the Dunn family, said the Foreign Office needed "to answer whether it knew Sacoolas was CIA at the time of Harry's death, and whether the US used her status as a family member to take advantage of the 'anomaly' whereby family members are said to have more immunity than diplomats at the base". The Dunn lawyers dispute the existence of this claimed anomaly.
Wagner added: "The Foreign Office have refused so far to disclose any information or documents about the discussions with the USA and the police after Harry died. The family are pushing hard for disclosures and have made an application for information and documents."
The Foreign Office said it was examining a freedom of information request by the family lawyers. The family believe the documents may reveal the government did not press hard for Sacoolas to remain in the country, partly because they were told of her past status as a CIA officer.
Asked about the reports of Sacoolas's CIA work, the housing minister, Robert Jenrick, told Sky's Sophy Ridge on Sunday show: "I don't know the reasons why the US have turned down our requests so far to extradite her. She needs to return to the UK.
"She should face justice, and I think it's a terrible situation - I think we all agree on that - for the family. Not only have they lost their child but they're not seeing somebody brought to justice for that."
Speaking earlier on the same show, the former foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt castigated the US for its refusal to send Sacoolas to the UK, and said a CIA link could be relevant.
"It may have a bearing on it, and I don't know the truth of these things because I'm not foreign secretary any more, but I still think it is totally and utterly unacceptable that she is not facing justice in the UK," he said.
"And if anyone is questioning that, I think we just need to ask what would have happened if the boot had been on the other foot, if a British diplomat had been involved in a road accident in the United States where someone had died and had fled on a private plane back to the UK and was evading justice - I don't think President Trump would stand for that for one second, and I don't think Britain would have behaved in that way."
Hunt added: "And I would just say to the United States - and I'm someone who's the strongest supporter of the special relationship, I think in a very uncertain world the democracies of the world need to stand together - but if we're going to be in an alliance, we need to treat each other like allies, and that is not happening."
The government has spent months attempting to persuade the US to return Sacoolas, who faces a charge of causing death by dangerous driving after the car she was driving stuck Dunn's motorbike outside RAF Croughton.