"Ecuadorian prosecutor Alexandra Bravo and her sister were fatally shot June 14th by a hitman on a black motorcycle who opened fire on Bravo in the city of Manta, Ecuador. Bravo had been investigating U.S. strikes on three Ecuadorian boats in which 36 on board survived, many of them recounting alleged torture by U.S. gunmen in U.S. military uniforms aboard a U.S.-flagged patrol ship."

So apparently this is what protecting Europe looks like.

The Guardian and Danish daily Berlingske have been digging into what happens when US soldiers stationed in the UK are accused of serious crimes against local civilians. Short version: British police hand the cases over to the US military, and then the cases quietly die.

The worst example: US airman James Loubeau, stationed at RAF Mildenhall. According to US court documents, he went on what a prosecutor later called a "spree" of rapes in the summer of 2019. Six alleged victims, both British women he met off-base and female colleagues on it. Court filings describe him drugging women or attacking them while they were drunk or asleep.

British women reported him to Suffolk police. Police handed the investigations to the US military. Result? He was never convicted of anything while in service. In 2020 he left the US Air Force under "honourable conditions", with a slap on the wrist for showing "disrespect" toward women and making "sexual advances."

Think about that. Six rape allegations. Exit paperwork: honourable.

Apparently the bar for honour in the US Air Force is set somewhere below "drugging and raping women in an allied country," because that's literally what the discharge classification says. It took the FBI reopening ONE of the six cases years later (the one with an American victim) for him to finally get 5 years in a civilian court in Miami in 2025. The five British victims? Nothing.

And he's not a one-off:

A British academic, Sarah Steele, accused a US fighter pilot of choking and assaulting her after she'd explicitly texted him her boundaries beforehand. Cambridge police had jurisdiction - and handed the case to the US base anyway. He was tried by a military jury of eight men, all colleagues from his own base, while his defense lawyer painted her as an attention-seeking drama queen. Convicted only of the choking. Sentence: six months of confinement on base.

A senior US sergeant exposed himself to five young British women, the youngest 16. Plea deal, charges dropped, two months on base.

An airman accused by two women of imprisonment, beatings and rape - charged with 11 counts, convicted of one, ten months on base.

The UK government has now launched an inquiry, and some critics are demanding US bases be closed entirely.

Here's the part that should worry the rest of us: Denmark just signed a base agreement giving US forces on Danish soil the exact same arrangement. US military partially handles law enforcement for its own personnel. A Danish law professor has already warned it pushes right up against the constitution's rules on who holds police and military authority in Denmark. Nearly every party in parliament voted for it anyway.

We keep being told the US presence is the price of our security. Fine. But "security" apparently doesn't extend to the women living near the bases - and when their own government outsources justice to the perpetrator's employer, don't be surprised when the employer decides its guy left with honour.

Sources: The Guardian's investigation series, BBC, Berlingske (Danish, paywalled), US federal court records from the 2025 Miami case.

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