Kal Raustiala: Why Diplomats Have Diplomatic Immunity
[Kal Raustiala is professor of law and director of the Burkle Center for International Relations at UCLA.]
For centuries nations have been trading envoys. Ambassadors, and the embassies they command, have long been treated as tiny outposts of the sending state — a chunk of territory that figuratively is taken from one state and dropped into another. And just as one state cannot invade or exercise legal jurisdiction within the territory of another, it follows that the embassy and ambassador are immune from the laws and jurisdiction of the host state.
These basic rules developed over many years but were codified in a 1961 treaty known as the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. That treaty specifies that embassy staff, as well as "administrative and technical staff" — the category Davis falls into — are immune from any prosecution by the host state. Nor can they be arrested or detained. Similarly, local police typically cannot seize the property of embassy staff or tax their income.
Given these rules, it is no surprise that spies are often hidden among embassy staff. The only recourse for a government that suspects a diplomat is really a spy is to send him or her back home. For example, a CIA agent named Cheri Leberknight, who worked at the American Embassy in Moscow and had diplomatic immunity, was captured in 1999 by Russian agents while en route to meet an informant. She was turned over to U.S. officials and sent home. Many similar incidents have occurred around the world....
Of course, diplomatic immunity creates problems too.... United Nations diplomats in New York, for instance, famously refuse to pay parking tickets. (At least some do: One study found that diplomats from Canada, Sweden and Japan had few delinquent tickets, while those from Chad, Sudan and Albania had many more — and in the case of Kuwait, nearly 250 unpaid tickets per diplomat.)
But worse crimes do occur. In 1997, a drunken diplomat from the former Soviet republic of Georgia caused a five-car pileup in Washington that killed a Maryland teenager. And in 1984, a British police officer named Yvonne Fletcher was killed by bullets from the Libyan Embassy in London, apparently fired by a diplomat....
Read entire article at LA Times
For centuries nations have been trading envoys. Ambassadors, and the embassies they command, have long been treated as tiny outposts of the sending state — a chunk of territory that figuratively is taken from one state and dropped into another. And just as one state cannot invade or exercise legal jurisdiction within the territory of another, it follows that the embassy and ambassador are immune from the laws and jurisdiction of the host state.
These basic rules developed over many years but were codified in a 1961 treaty known as the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. That treaty specifies that embassy staff, as well as "administrative and technical staff" — the category Davis falls into — are immune from any prosecution by the host state. Nor can they be arrested or detained. Similarly, local police typically cannot seize the property of embassy staff or tax their income.
Given these rules, it is no surprise that spies are often hidden among embassy staff. The only recourse for a government that suspects a diplomat is really a spy is to send him or her back home. For example, a CIA agent named Cheri Leberknight, who worked at the American Embassy in Moscow and had diplomatic immunity, was captured in 1999 by Russian agents while en route to meet an informant. She was turned over to U.S. officials and sent home. Many similar incidents have occurred around the world....
Of course, diplomatic immunity creates problems too.... United Nations diplomats in New York, for instance, famously refuse to pay parking tickets. (At least some do: One study found that diplomats from Canada, Sweden and Japan had few delinquent tickets, while those from Chad, Sudan and Albania had many more — and in the case of Kuwait, nearly 250 unpaid tickets per diplomat.)
But worse crimes do occur. In 1997, a drunken diplomat from the former Soviet republic of Georgia caused a five-car pileup in Washington that killed a Maryland teenager. And in 1984, a British police officer named Yvonne Fletcher was killed by bullets from the Libyan Embassy in London, apparently fired by a diplomat....