The Guardian is investigating crimes committed by US personnel on British soil. In recent weeks they have reported on the cases of Jacob Wulfson, a US fighter pilot who strangled a British woman in his apartment in Cambridge; Tyrion Davis, an American airman who sexually assaulted a British woman in Brandon, Suffolk; and Hannes Marschalek, a US airman who allegedly exposed himself to a 16-year-old girl and four young women in Littleport, Cambridgeshire, in 2022.
In all the cases, US airmen avoided the British justice system after the local police force chose to cede control of the investigation to American military police.
In the latest case, James Loubeau, a US airman based at RAF Mildenhall, allegedly attacked a total of six women in East Anglia over a four-month period in 2019. Three of the women were British and three others were female military personnel serving with Loubeau at RAF Mildenhall.
Yet again, Suffolk police ceded investigation into the rapes of these women to the US military, which led to Loubeau receiving a court martial acquittal. He was eventually convicted of sexual assault under American law.
This is part of an horrific pattern of rapes and assaults against women and children by US personnel stationed at US bases across the world. This includes the case of US personnel who gang-raped a child in Okinawa in Japan. The US refused to hand over the Marines to Japanese authorities, citing the Japan-U.S. status of forces agreement, which prompted outrage among the people of Okinawa.
This is yet more shocking evidence of the consequences of legal impunity granted the US administration through these military agreements.
In Britain this is enshrined in the Visiting Forces Act. Not only are bases facilitating US war crimes in Iran and genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza, US personnel from these bases are committing sexually violent crimes.
Now more than ever, the British government has to close these US bases down.