Inquest opens into death of Army officer after incident on Cyprus RAF base

Colour Sergeant Anthony Oxley, who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan, was on deployment in June 2016 when he was involved in the crash at the RAF Akrotiri base.

The 40-year-old, from Ryhill, near Wakefield, West Yorkshire, was riding a motorbike when he collided with a Toyota Corolla driven by a US serviceman and later died at a Cypriot hospital.

An inquest hearing into his death is expected to begin on the island on Thursday after it was adjourned in June.

A 2018 inquest in the UK recorded a narrative verdict, that CSgt Oxley’s death had been caused by multiple blunt force injuries to his head, as a result of a road traffic collision.

But his widow, Sally Oxley, is appealing for a new inquest there to look into witness accounts of his death earlier this year.

Mrs Oxley previously said she had been left in the dark about the details of how her husband died.

In April, her legal team submitted a request to the attorney general for England and Wales, seeking permission to go to the High Court and appeal for a fresh inquest.

KRW Law, which represent Mrs Oxley, said the US Air Force took charge of the investigation and few details were made public, even though Mr Oxley’s death happened within British sovereign territory.

Mrs Oxley, 45, told the PA news agency that she was told during a meeting with a US general that the US serviceman involved in the accident would face no charges and that was “the end of the matter”.

She said she has been left with “many unanswered questions” after the “cursory” inquest in 2018.

Christopher Stanley, of KRW Law, said there were discrepancies in the evidence between witnesses and a new inquest was “in the interests of justice”.

Mrs Oxley, from Barnsley, said: “I know the outcome’s never going to be changed but my husband didn’t serve 21 years for them just to say he died by blunt force.

“It’s not good enough.”