The extreme secrecy of the court martial allows perpetrators to fly under the radar. Illustration: Guardian Design/Getty View image in fullscreen The extreme secrecy of the court martial allows perpetrators to fly under the radar. Illustration: Guardian Design/Getty First Edition newsletter UK criminal justice Thursday briefing: The UK’s special relationship with the US allows their servicemen to avoid our justice system In today’s newsletter: With trials held on sealed bases, British victims are left to navigate a justice system they cannot see or understand
Prefer the Guardian on Google Good morning. After a short hiatus, the US overnight carried out a “heavy wave of strikes” against Iran, which the American military said was a “powerful response” to attempted missile attacks on its forces in the region. “It’s our turn to hit them. They know it’s coming,” Donald Trump told reporters. The Guardian has lots of coverage of these recent developments, including of the US joining forces with the Saudis to launch strikes in Iraq, which experts warn are pushing the region into “ uncharted territory ”.
But today we’re bringing you a different story about the US military . For the last six months, the Guardian’s investigations team has been reporting on the secretive world of US military bases in Britain. Base justice, their investigation, has uncovered how military servicemen accused of raping and sexually assaulting women in the UK have successfully avoided the British justice system.
These servicemen have been tried at court martial by their peers, who have appeared to hand down lesser sentences than they would have potentially received under British law. Harry Davies , an investigations correspondent at the Guardian, is one of a team working on this. He relayed the story behind the investigation, and what it tells us about the “special relationship” between the US and Britain. That’s after the headlines.
UK news | Half of England is officially in drought , with July set to be the driest on record after winter floods, the Environment Agency has said.
Middle East | The US military has launched strikes on Iranian targets in response to Tehran’s attack on American forces in Jordan on Wednesday, raising the risk of a return to all-out-war in the region.
UK politics | The convicted fraudster George Cottrell transferred a total of more than $2m to his mother , Fiona Cottrell, in the days before her 2024 donations to Reform UK, the Guardian understands.
Ukraine | Russian air strikes killed at least 13 people in Ukraine on Thursday, including one in Kyiv, as attacks that extended as far as the western city of Lviv forced neighbouring Poland to scramble fighter jets to secure its airspace.
Europe news | Three Greek firefighters have died while tackling wildfires on the island of Crete and in the south of the mainland, the Greek fire department has said, as extreme heat hinders efforts to control blazes ravaging southern Europe.
View image in fullscreen The conduct of the US forces is governed by their own set of laws which apply wherever they are stationed. Photograph: Joshua Bright/The Guardian The US military bases are slices of Americana in rural England. Lakenheath, in the Suffolk countryside, has its own shopping mall, a drive-thru Taco Bell and a miniature Statue of Liberty. The bases are closed to the public, so when Harry and Rob Evans, a Guardian investigative reporter, applied to visit Lakenheath to sit in on a court martial i…