DIPLOMATS WHO COMMIT CRIMES IN HOST COUNTRIES
                                          

It is an unfortunate fact of life that many diplomats have committed crimes in host countries because of the immunity they have against being arrested.

Diplomatic immunity is a form of legal immunity that ensures diplomats are given safe passage and are considered not susceptible to lawsuits or prosecution under the host country's laws, but they can still be expelled. Modern diplomatic immunity was codified as international law in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations in 1961 which has been ratified by all but a handful of nations.  

The concept and custom of diplomatic immunity dates back thousands of years. Many principles of diplomatic immunity are now considered to be customary law. Diplomatic immunity was developed to allow for the maintenance of government relations, including during periods of difficulties and armed conflict. When receiving diplomats, who formally represent the sovereign, the receiving head of state grants certain privileges and immunities to ensure they may effectively carry out their duties, on the understanding that these are provided on a reciprocal basis.

The tradition of diplomatic immunity stretches back to ancient Rome. In the 12^th century, during the Crusades, Saladin, the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty, and Richard Coeur de Lion, the King of England, could dispatch emissaries borne with messages for the enemy without fear that they would be harmed. In 1790, the U.S. passed a law that gave absolute immunity to diplomats, families, servants and lower ranking officials at foreign missions.

In 1978 a new law, the Diplomatic Relations Act, which accepted the Vienna Conventions on Diplomatic Relations, replaced it. There are two main conventions, one pertaining to diplomats and the other to consular officials. Diplomats cannot be arrested or made subject to the jurisdiction of the courts and other authorities, for both their official duties and personal activities. The convention on consular officials only covers their official activities.

It is possible for the official's home country to waive immunity. This tends to happen only when the individual has committed a serious crime, unconnected with their diplomatic role (as opposed to, say, allegations of spying, or has witnessed such a crime. However, many countries refuse to waive immunity as a matter of course; individuals have no authority to waive their own immunity except perhaps in cases of defection. Alternatively, the home country may prosecute the individual.  If immunity is waived by a government so that a diplomat (or their family members) can be prosecuted, it must be because there is a case to answer and it is in the public interest to prosecute them. For instance, in 2002, a Colombian diplomat in London was prosecuted for manslaughter, once diplomatic immunity was waived by the Colombian government.

Now I will tell you about bad diplomats who committed crimes in their host countries.

Foreign diplomats have been accused of a string of rapes, sexual assaults, child abuse and murder while working at embassies in Britain.

The catalogue of offences attributed to the envoys whose diplomatic immunity prevents them being prosecuted was revealed for the first time in 2006.

The list shows that between 1999 and 2004, foreign officials in Britain (the UK) were accused of 122 criminal offences. The Foreign Office published the details under the Freedom of Information Act despite initially claiming the disclosure was 'likely to prejudice relations between the UK and other nations.

Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said she intended to publish an annual list of diplomatic criminality. The move comes amid growing calls for the centuries-old conventions of diplomatic immunity to be scrapped or altered.

Britain has been embroiled in a series of long-running inter-national rows over its rights to prosecute envoys charged with crimes. It follows the case of a 41-year-old Saudi diplomat suspected of indecently assaulting an 11-year-old girl in London in which the police had no power to investigate.

The Saudi embassy promised a thorough investigation and a trial for the man in Saudi Arabia if the claims had foundation. But the immunity system put him out of reach of the police so an investigation couldn’t be completed.

It also comes after the 2003 case of a Colombian diplomat, Sergeant Major Jairo Soto-Mendoza, accused of murder. The South American country's military attache was prosecuted in London only after massive behind-the-scenes pressure was put on his government.

Soto-Mendoza was accused of hunting down and killing a man who mugged his son, and stabbing him to death in a supermarket car park after a chase. He was finally cleared at the Old Bailey courthouse in July 2003 after he waived his diplomatic immunity.

The figures relating to diplomatic crimes reveal that the Saudi Arabians to be the most frequent offenders.

Staff who work in embassies have been accused of three offences of indecent assault, two for possessing an offensive weapon, three for drunk-driving, one for possessing Class B drugs and one for bribery.

Seven Nigerian diplomats have also been accused of crimes   including one with arranging sham marriages, another with money laundering, two with serious assaults and two with handling stolen goods.

Other allegations include child abuse claims against a Moroccan envoy and a Kazakhstan diplomat accused of child neglect.

Some 59 offences of driving under the influence of alcohol were also disclosed - four against Russian envoys.

In a written statement to the House of Commons, the Foreign Secretary, Mrs. Beckett said: "From 2007, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office shall present this information to Parliament annually, by means of a written ministerial statement, by the end of June, covering the previous five-year-period."

Around 22,500 people are entitled to diplomatic immunity in the UK. The number of alleged serious crimes committed by members of the diplomatic community in the UK is proportionately low," the writing by UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson stated.

A member of the Mexican Embassy allegedly forced an underage child to look at an image of sexual activity, while someone at the Saudi Arabian mission took an indecent photo of a child and used the abuse to harass the victim.

A staffer of the Saudi Embassy was reportedly also involved in human trafficking or forced a person to compulsory labor. A member of the Gabon Embassy is said to have smuggled a person into the United Kingdom to be exploited for domestic chores. Someone in the Chinese Embassy reportedly committed the offense of actual bodily harm.  Additionally, the US Embassy owed Britain a total of 10.6 million pounds ($14 million) in unpaid fines for driving offences as of 2015.

Behind the elegant accredited foreign embassies lurk drunks, drug-dealers and violent criminals however British authorities are powerless to prosecute them for those crimes because the police cannot enter the embassies to arrest the criminals.

Foreign diplomats can get away with murder. They are also escaping prosecution for rape, child abuse, indecent assault, fraud, bribery and possession of drugs and firearms.

For the first time, figures have been released in the UK showing the crimes committed by those who work behind the elegant facades of London's embassies. They reveal that between 1999 and 2004, 122 serious offences were allegedly committed by embassy staff - and Britain is powerless to prosecute. These include allegations of murder by a Colombian diplomat, two counts of indecent assault from South Africa - including an incident of drunken groping - and Moroccan embassy officials accused of rape and child abuse.

Embassy staff from France and Germany, stood accused of assault; while India was accused of conspiracy to steal, a German diplomat of facilitating illegal immigration to the UK; and the Dominican Republic of fraud and money laundering.

Under the 1961 Vienna Convention, foreign officials, their spouses, children and staff are protected from prosecution by their host country.

The State Immunity Act 1978, the Diplomatic Privileges Act 1967 and the Consular Relations Act 1968 all carry additional protection for embassy staff. Personnel accused of a serious crime cannot be touched by UK law unless their own country waives immunity to allow prosecution.

The only sanction the British government can impose is to declare embassy staff persona non grata, (person not welcome) give them a police escort to the airport and put them on a plane home. If a diplomat refuses to leave despite being declared persona non grata, the host country is then entitled to strip him or her of diplomatic immunity and then proceeded with charging and trying the former diplomat with the crimes te former diplomatt is  accused of having committed.

In 2002 it was only the personal intervention of Tony Blair that pressured Colombia into waiving diplomatic immunity after two of its nationals, one was a diplomat who was accused of murdering Damian Broom, a 23-year-old Tesco warehouseman.

The official figures, released for the first time by the Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, show that behind the tinted windows and diplomatic number plates, embassy staff are consistently driving under the influence of alcohol.

Russia also tops the league table of offenders, with four cases of its staff breaking the law out of a total of 59 offences by 41 named countries.  

Saudi Arabia comes second with three staff committing similar offences, while another of its diplomats is accused of possession of class B drugs with intent to supply. The kingdom also comes first in instances of its staff possessing a firearm or offensive weapon and committing indecent assault.

Britain expelled a Saudi diplomat, Ali al-Shamarani, in 2003 after he bribed a Metropolitan police officer.

In 2004, police accused the then Saudi ambassador to Britain, Prince Turki al-Faisal, of blocking an investigation into claims that a diplomat molested an 11-year-old girl. The Saudis refused to waive the diplomat's immunity, saying embassy staff were conducting an internal enquiry.

The United States, Swiss and Libyan diplomats are also accused of possessing firearms or offensive weapons. Nigeria's embassy staff are shown to have handled stolen goods, arranged a sham marriage while Angola is accused of robbery and assault. Meanwhile Zimbabwe's personnel top the league of driving without insurance, while Swaziland is accused of vehicle theft and Mongolia of smuggling.

In 2000, citing diplomatic immunity, a senior South African diplomat in the UK escaped charges after allegedly drunkenly groping two air stewardesses and shouting racist abuse on a South Africa Airways flight from Johannesburg to London.

Following the siege at the Libyan embassy in 1984, during which WPC Yvonne Fletcher was killed, the Thatcher government came under pressure to restrict diplomatic immunity. Evidence at the time pointed to the embassy as the origin of her gunshot wounds, fired from a weapon carried to Britain in a diplomatic bag.

In the 1990s diplomatic bags became a by-word for drug-running, forcing the government to threaten to use sniffer-dogs and scanners on inviolable baggage, but stopped short of threatening the arrest of foreign diplomats.

More recently, the US government decided to bail out its overseas staff accused of not paying parking fines. It paid up the penalties its diplomats had incurred and deducted the total from that country's foreign aid. That last decision was in my opinion, a bad move.

A spokesman for the Foreign Office said: "The UK is unable to unilaterally change the terms of the Vienna Convention to which the UK is signed and adheres to." The spokesman added that there are 23,000 diplomats in London and that in 2004 only 11 serious offences were committed.

A Saudi diplomat accused of holding captive, beating and repeatedly raping two Nepali women hired as domestic servants in his luxury apartment near New Delhi.  Indian police raided the diplomat’s residence in the satellite town of Gurgaon and told reporters they found two Nepali women employed as maids. The police later opened an inquiry into allegations made by the two women that they had been held against their will, denied food and water, beaten and repeatedly raped by up to seven men at a time over a period of at least 15 days.

Indian foreign ministry spokesman, Vikas Swarup issued a statement saying that the diplomat under diplomatic immunity and was protected by the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations.

The Saudi Arabian embassy issued a statement describing the allegations as “completely baseless” said it had lodged an official complaint about the raid on the apartment, which it said was a breach of diplomatic privilege.

The police investigations ended their investigation when officers were unable to question the diplomat, who was reported to have moved with his family into the Saudi Arabian embassy in Delhi due to his diplomatic status. Police officers had sought the Indian foreign ministry’s help obtaining access to the accused man and senior Indian diplomats asked the Saudi envoy to seek his cooperation in the inquiry.

Under the Vienna convention, which entered into force in 1964, diplomats and their family members enjoy a high degree of legal protection in countries where they are posted and cannot be arrested or detained for any crime.

Workers with an NGO (Non Governmental Organization) told the Guardian both women came from remote rural parts of Nepal and were sent to Saudi Arabia as domestic servants by human traffickers before returning to Delhi with their new employer. Such networks send thousands of women to India from Nepal, and hundreds at least to the Gulf, every year.

Nepal was hit by a devastating earthquake in April 2015 that destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes and livelihoods and left many destitute, increasing the vulnerability of millions of women to such gangs. One of the two women was reported to have lost her home in the disaster.

Reports of medical examinations of the victims leaked to local media appeared to support the women’s description of repeated abuse. The women, aged 30 and 50, were rescued on 7 September 2015 from the 10th and 12th floor of an apartment block after a third, recently hired maid raised the alarm.

She who was the recently hired maid realised what was going on She was smart.  she threatened employer and left a few days later and she helped the victims get out of the apartment.

Police in Nepal made several arrests and said they were trying to trace a key agent who may have trafficked hundreds of women from the poor south Asian state to India and the Gulf nations.

The incident prompted women’s rights activists to protest outside the Saudi embassy in New Delhi, demanding the diplomat’s arrest. Indian campaigners said allowing the accused diplomat to depart amounted to deserting the victims.

The allegations and police inquiry posed a diplomatic dilemma for India. Narendra Modi, the prime minister, who was going to visit Saudi Arabia had a problem. Saudi Arabia supplied significant quantities of oil to the emerging economic power and also employed around two million Indian workers in that country. However there are deep concerns in Delhi about China’s growing influence in Nepal, and increasing India’s influence in the neighbouring Himalayan state is a key foreign policy objective.

 Geneva-based UN Watch, a non-governmental human rights organization, had called for the removal of the Sudanese diplomat Hassan Salih, who in May 2017 was elected vice-chair of the UN committee that oversees the work of 4,500 human rights NGOs.

Salih grabbed a 23-year-old woman's buttocks and breast while dancing at Third Avenue’s Bar None around 2:25 a.m., the New York Post reported. While police were interviewing him and the woman, he tried to escape. The police chased and handcuffed Salih and put him in a police cruiser, according to media reports. Salih invoked diplomatic immunity and was allowed to go free after police confirmed his credentials as a diplomat at the United Nations.

Salih is listed on the website of the Sudanese Mission to the UN as a ‘second officer’ a mid-level position requiring at least five years of experience before he got that appointment.

The document also stipulates that family members of diplomats living in the host country are given the same protections as the diplomats themselves. Host countries are legally permitted to declare diplomats persona non grata, which would give the foreign emissaries a window of time to prepare to leave their post and return home.

A local newspaper reported: "Last month (in September), the daughter of a foreign diplomat staffed at the German Embassy stabbed a schoolmate twice in the shoulder with scissors at a preppy international school in Washington, DC. The young girl avoided prosecution because of her father’s diplomatic immunity."

The New York Daily reported in In January that a Sudanese diplomat was arrested for grinding his body on a woman in a Manhattan subway. Cops charged Mohammad Abdalla Ali with sexual abuse and forcible touching the woman after he rubbed against the woman on a northbound No. 4 as it left Grand Central on January 9^th.  As to be expected,  Ali was freed once he proved his role provided diplomatic immunity."

Reacting to the case involving the Sudanese diplomat Salih, Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, said on October 10^th, "If a man accused of sexual assault should be allowed to continue overseeing hundreds of human rights groups that defend the rights of women, this will cast a shadow upon the reputation of the UN as a whole. " He added: "It's the fox guarding the chickens." And urged UN Secretary–General António Guterres to "remove" him from the UN post.

Replying to a question in a noon briefing, Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesman for the Secretary-General, said, “The NGO chair is elected by Member States. It's up to those Member States who make up the committee to make a decision based on what has happened."

He added: "We clearly stand firmly against any sort of harassment or of illegal or bad behaviour. This is now an issue between the United States and the Government of Sudan."

Dujarric continued: "I think, as a matter of practice, we would expect anyone who has the privilege of immunity to obey the rules and the regulations and the laws and the customs of the country in which they work. And I do want to make it clear that this person (Hassan Salih) is not a UN employee or UN staffer as it's been said in some of the press coverage."

The Sudan Tribune reported from Khartoum that Sudan’s Foreign Ministry said it was "investigating the arrest of a diplomat at Sudan’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations for allegedly groping a woman at a bar in Manhattan, New York."

In a statement extended to the Sudan Tribune, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Gharib Allah Khidir said: “Some media outlets and social media reported accusations of violating the proper conduct against a diplomat at Sudan’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York”.

He pointed out that the Foreign Ministry has immediately contacted the Mission to clarify the facts and conduct an investigation with the diplomat according to the relevant law and regulations. Khidir stressed the Foreign Ministry “deals seriously with any accusations of violations of the code of professional conduct and public service ethics.”

In 1967, Burma’s Ambassador in Sri Lanka, Sao Boonwaa, confronted his wife Shirley, who he believed was having an affair. Their neighbors in the Cinnamon Gardens suburb of Colombo heard gunshots early in the morning.

Later that day, a potent smell wafted from the Boonwaat home. Neighbors saw three Buddhist monks conducting final rites over a funeral pyre. The envoy was arrested, and at first even denied bail, but he invoked diplomatic immunity and a senior official was dispatched by the Burmese regime to argue for their ambassador’s release. Sao Boonwaat returned to Burma a couple of months later, never to face trial for the killing of his wife, according to Singapore’s Straits Times.

Since then, few crimes committed have been as egregious, but foreign diplomats still continue to evade arrest and prosecution for alleged crimes as they furtively board flights back to their countries against the backdrop of local outrage and strained diplomatic relations.