Key facts
- MoD officials believe Cambridgeshire police wrongly ceded jurisdiction of the Jacob Wulfson investigation to the US military.
- Wulfson was convicted of strangling an intimate partner but acquitted of sexual assault.
- The US military aims to prosecute as many of its personnel as possible within its agreement with the UK.
- British victims have given evidence in US courts martial, which may not afford the same protections as UK courts.
- A cross-government inquiry is examining how US military personnel are not being brought to justice in British courts.
Ministry of Defence officials have privately accused Cambridgeshire police of wrongly handing over the investigation of US Air Force Captain Jacob Wulfson to the US military, according to documents obtained by The Guardian. Wulfson was accused of strangling Sarah Steele and sexually assaulting her in his Cambridge flat in December 2023. The decision meant Wulfson was tried in a US military tribunal on an airbase rather than an English court. MoD officials stated the agreement with the US only permitted the US military to acquire jurisdiction in narrow circumstances, which the Steele case did not appear to meet. The UK government has launched a high-level inquiry into such cases.