Diplomats are supposed to be tactful peacemakers. As emissaries of their home country in a foreign
nation, they act as dignified officials who preserve the countries’ relationships in
the best possible way. This role means that when they’re posted
in a country, they have certain legal powers normal people can only dream about. The most famous of these is diplomatic immunity
… and sadly, quite a few diplomats abuse this privilege to commit crimes. 10. Shuji Shimokoji, the wife-beating diplomat Shuji Shimokoji is a long-term Japanese diplomat
who has served his country since 1970. In 1999, he was Japan’s consul general in
Vancouver, when Canadian officials discovered that his private behavior was less than diplomatic. They arrested Shimokoji for assaulting his
wife during an argument. The diplomat had bruised his wife’s face
and arms with his fists, and when questioned about his behavior, he insisted that wife-beating
“was a cultural thing and not a big deal.” Canada disagreed and charged Shimokoji with
assault. The diplomat entered a guilty plea, but thanks
to his immunity, he was given an absolute discharge: No criminal record, no jail time
served. That’s not to say he got away entirely without
consequences, though. The Japanese officials were not exactly amused
by Shimokoji’s comments about cultural wife-beating, and their Foreign Ministry ordered him to
return home. However, the crime did little to derail Shinokoji’s
career in diplomacy. After some apologies, he went on to serve
as a minister in Japan’s embassy in the US. He later served as his country’s ambassador
to various countries, including Panama and Venezuela. 9. The American Soldier who killed a famous rock
star Diplomatic immunity is not necessarily limited
to old men in suits. Almost anyone with the right credentials can
have one, even soldiers. One of the strangest ways a soldier has ever
claimed immunity happened in 2004, when Marine Staff Sergeant Cristopher VanGoethem killed
a famous Romanian rock star … and immediately left the country under diplomatic immunity. VanGoethem was working as a guard at the U.S.
embassy in Bucharest, when he ignored a stop sign and the SUV he was driving rammed into
a taxi. The passenger of said taxi happened to be
Teo Peter, a beloved Romanian rock star. Peter was killed in the crash, and a breath
test by the local police showed that VanGoethem had been drinking. Before he could be arrested, the embassy officials
intervened, and an embassy official escorted VanGoethem safely out of the country. Although the Romanian officials protested
this, the U.S. insisted that they would carry out their own investigations. In 2006, a U.S. court martial found VanGoethem
not guilty of negligent homicide. They did, however, find him guilty of some
lesser charges, such as obstruction of justice and making false statements. 8. Diplomats can just stop paying rent and landlords
can't do anything about it A tenant with a steady, well-paying job seems
like a dream for most landlords, but when the job in question gives the tenant diplomatic
immunity, things can get a lot more difficult. If a diplomat decides to stop paying rent,
there’s very little a landlord can do to persuade them. Diplomatic immunity makes them summons-proof,
and you can’t even evict them. Sure, a landlord could try to make them sign
a document that makes them waive their immunity for rent-related purposes, but even that is
destined to fail: Diplomats can sign any document they want but they can’t legally stop being
diplomatically immune if their country doesn’t officially strip the privilege from them. This is a particularly big problem in New
York, where the City Administrative Code prevents discrimination based on employment. This is normally an excellent thing, but in
the context of diplomats who don’t want to pay rent, it’s a minefield -- especially
since the city has the highest concentration of people with diplomatic immunity in the
whole country. As a result, some countries’ missions and
embassies have racked up tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid rent, and have no intention
to pay. 7. A Qatari sheikh races through Los Angeles
in his Ferrari In 2017, Los Angeles witnessed a real life
version of Grand Theft Auto V, when a yellow Ferrari and a white Porsche raced through
the streets of Beverly Hills, ignoring traffic signs and recklessly zooming through residential
areas. The race finally ended when the Ferrari pulled
to a stop on a driveway in a rich area, its engine smoking. The police immediately realized that this
would be a difficult investigation. Although the drivers’ faces weren’t clearly
visible in the surveillance footage, the cars were connected to Sheik Khalid Hamad Al-Thani,
a rich motorsports enthusiast who may or may not be part of the Qatar royal family. At least one of the vehicles wasn’t registered
to be brought into the U.S. And to make things even more complicated,
when the Sheikh was contacted about the incident, he immediately invoked diplomatic immunity. What makes this case particularly strange
is that the police were suspicious about the Sheikh actually having any diplomatic protection. However, they were unable to do anything about
it, because when they were still considering the charges, the Sheikh and his cars both
disappeared from the country. The Beverly Hills authorities said that they’d
look into charging the people involved with reckless driving, and possibly with false
claims of diplomatic immunity. However, it looks like no progress on the
case has been made, so we’re guessing their efforts haven’t been exactly productive. 6. Some diplomats freely traffic humans and the
law can do nothing about it A little known fact about diplomats is that
when they’re operating at the highest level of immunity, they’re so untouchable that
they can even freely traffic humans. Some diplomats happily abuse this ability
by importing personal servants and domestic workers from their home countries, then confiscating
their passports and keeping them around at slave wage. A 2008 Government Accountability Office investigation
found 42 such workers in the U.S., but their true numbers are thought to be much higher. This is because the trafficked workers often
live in fear of their “employers”, who keep them in restricted conditions and hold
considerable power over them. According to the organisations and investigating
bodies keeping track of the situation, this is a problem most countries are at least somewhat
aware of, but choose to carefully smooth over. Despite the fact that some of these workers
are forced to work over 90 hours a week without breaks, rest or sometimes even food, the problem
has persisted for decades. The extremely few diplomats who have ended
up in hot water because of their human trafficking have been relatively low-ranking ones who
handled the job so badly that the country had no choice but to react. In a famous case from 2014, an Indian consular
official called Devyani Khobragade was indicted on charges of visa fraud and false statements
because she tried to obtain a visa for a domestic worker who wasn’t paid even the minimum
wage. Even then, India tried to claim that Khobragade
had full diplomatic immunity. When it turned out that she didn’t have
one, they tried to get her one. Despite all this, it took enormous public
pressure for the United States to deny the change in Khobragade’s assignment and indict
her. 5. North Korean diplomats smuggle drugs and have
many criminal side hustles Life is pretty weird and horrifying for almost
everyone living in North Korea. Still, things don’t necessarily get any
better if you manage to land yourself a cozy diplomat gig and leave the country behind,
even if it’s just temporarily. First of all, regardless of where you’re
posted, you’re not going to be paid much more than you would in Pyongyang, which forces
North Korean diplomats in expensive cities like London to shop in thrift stores. Since the country’s leadership also requires
its embassies to be “self-sufficient”, the embassy staff is struggling to pay the
bills or even buy food. This poverty has caused North Korean diplomats
to take up all sorts of criminal side hustles, with varying levels of success. In 1976, their embassy in Denmark asked to
import 2.5 million cigarettes “for personal consumption”. When this pretty obvious attempt at smuggling
was denied, two of the embassy’s diplomats were arrested because their cars were stuffed
with half a ton of marijuana. Meanwhile, in Norway, the ambassador and his
team were caught with 4,000 smuggled bottles of liquor and 140,000 cigarettes. And the list goes on. Between 1984 and 2004 alone, there were over
50 documented arrests of North Korean diplomats. Many of them were selling possibly state-produced
crystal meth, and some experts believe that state-sanctioned drug trade might be pretty
much an official part of the North Korean diplomat’s job. 4. A diplomat escapes child predator charges
thanks to diplomatic immunity Investigators often attempt to lure child
predators by posing as underage kids online. In 2005, one sheriff’s deputy from Bedford
County, Virginia caught a particularly big fish this way. Posing as a 13-year-old girl, he was soon
targeted by a creepy guy who solicited a meeting with “her” at the local shopping mall. When the meeting took place and the sheriff’s
men moved to arrest the man, they were in for an unexpected discovery: The child predator
in question was Salem Al-Mazrooei, a diplomat working for the United Arab Emirates. Al-Mazrooei immediately requested diplomatic
immunity, and the Bedford County officials were forced to release him after confirming
his identity. However, a particularly tenacious Commonwealth
Attorney called Randy Krantz wasn’t satisfied with the outcome, and started a quest to prosecute
Al-Mazrooei and get his immunity waived. Unfortunately, the UAE embassy were less than
welcoming: While Krantz was under the impression they were reviewing the case, the embassy
appears to have prepared for Al-Mazrooei’s quiet removal from the country. Still, although the U.S. officials didn’t
get to prosecute the man, they at least made sure that he isn’t welcome in the country:
the State Department made sure that he could not enter U.S. soil unless it was to answer
the charges that are waiting for him in Virginia. 3. A diplomat escapes a manslaughter case after
killing a cyclist with his car door Berlin, 2017. A man casually opened the door of his Porsche
without checking whether the path is clear. This resulted in tragedy, as the door opened
directly in the path of a cyclist, who didn’t have the time to brake or swerve. He died on his way to the hospital. Normally, this would have led to an investigation
and possible negligent manslaughter charges. However, in this case, the driver was a Saudi
diplomat with immunity, and the police had no choice but to let him go. Hundreds of cyclists protested the case, as
did the victim’s widow. The German officials sent a verbal note to
the Saudi embassy, but while the embassy did offer a heartfelt apology over the death,
it became apparent that they were far more likely to quietly withdraw the driver from
the country than they were to waive his diplomatic immunity. Still, at least some good came out of this
particular tragedy: The public started paying attention to the massive number of traffic
violations by diplomats stationed in Berlin: there were 22,880 offences in 2016 alone. 2. Libyan embassy in London opens fire and kills
a police officer On 17 April, 1984, an anti-Gaddafi demonstration
took place in front of the Libyan embassy in London. Out of the blue, someone from inside the embassy
opened fire at the demonstrators. The bullets injured 10 protesters. One of them also fatally hit police constable
Yvonne Fletcher, who was present at the scene. The incident started a massive diplomatic
incident. The London Metropolitan police sieged the
Libyan embassy for 11 days, and the UK ultimately cut diplomatic ties with Libya. Still, PC Fletcher’s killer was never found. When Gaddafi’s rule ended during Libya’s
2011 revolution, the British hoped that they could send investigators in the country to
get to the bottom of the case. This turned out to be a hopeless effort, and
it seemed that Fletcher’s murder would remain unsolved. The investigators made some progress when
a former minister of the Gaddafi regime seeked political asylum in Britain and was arrested
on suspicion of being involved with the case. Still, it’s unknown if this particular man
had a role in Fletcher’s death, because in 2017, the police said that they’re dropping
the murder enquiry. That’s not to say that they don’t know
the identity of the people involved in the death -- they’re actually pretty sure that
they do. The problem is that they can’t show any
of their evidence in court because of national security issues. 1. A killer with diplomatic immunity nearly destroyed
the relations of Pakistan and the U.S. Like we mentioned earlier, the whole point
of diplomats is that they preserve the peaceful relationship between countries. In 2011, Raymond Davis almost managed to do
the exact opposite by single-handedly destroying the relationships of the United States and
Pakistan. In a busy intersection in Lahore, Davis shot
and killed two Pakistani men who approached his car on a motorcycle, with guns on their
hands. The way he did it was straight out of the
handbook of a spy movie villain: He peppered the men with bullets through the windshield
of his vehicle, then got out of the car and finished the man who was trying to flee with
several bullets in his back. The spy vibe didn’t end there: After the
killings, Davis radioed the American Consulate, and soon, a wildly driving SUV arrived to
pick him up, driving in the wrong direction of a one-way street. This didn’t go well, as the car hit and
killed a motorcyclist before picking up Davis, and escaped the scene. Davis was caught red-handed and arrested. While searching the scene, the police found
bullets, a mask, some cloth with an American flag on it, and a camera that contained secretly
taken photos of Pakistani military locations. This confirmed everyone’s suspicions that
Davis was a CIA operative spying on the country, and he was hauled away to prison. The case caused a massive anti-American sentiment
in Pakistan, and it didn’t exactly help that the US government invoked diplomatic
immunity: Even President Obama publicly called for Davis to be released. Pakistan would not be budged. Noting that the diplomatic immunity of Davis
wasn’t quite as airtight as the President made it seem, and angry that the CIA refused
to acknowledge the man as one of their own, Pakistan took Davis to court. This did not go particularly well for them,
as Davis was soon acquitted after the families of the deceased received mysterious monetary
compensation that enabled Davis’ release under Sharia law, where the relatives of the
victim can pardon the killer. In the end, Davis got away with whatever it
is he had been doing. Still, the whole incident was massively damaging
to the relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan, especially on the Pakistani side. Even after Seal Team Six entered Pakistani
soil to take down Osama Bin Laden a few months later, the Davis case was still the one Pakistanis
were more angry about.
stai putin, Teo Peter a murit intr-un taxi lovit de un militar american, nu de un diplomat