More ways to listen Apple podcasts Spotify RSS Feed Download Presented by Annie Kelly with Harry Davies ; produced by Saskia Collette , Eli Block and Brian McNamara ; executive producer Homa Khaleeli Fri 26 Jun 2026 04.00 CEST Share 00:00:00 00:00:00 When the academic Sarah Steele was assaulted in England, she had no idea her case would end up in front of a US military court. Harry Davies explains why military judges and juries are ruling on crimes committed in the UK
A little-known system in which US military personnel are tried through a court martial for alleged crimes committed in the UK is under growing scrutiny. One person who has been through that system is the academic Sarah Steele.
Steele told the Guardian investigations correspondent Harry Davies that after she was strangled one night by Jacob Wulfson, a US fighter pilot who lived in a flat in Cambridge , her case was taken up by the US military justice system. The members of the jury at her trial were all men from the air force. “ It’s been really difficult having to literally sit in a room full of people in uniform, overwhelmingly older men, and have those individuals who haven’t any semblance of life experience similar to my own; they were culturally different,” she said.
Davies tells Annie Kelly about this parallel justice system, how it differs from British courts and what other crimes committed in the UK are tried under it.