Does Diplomatic Immunity Really Make It So You Can Get Away with Murder?

this video is brought to you by Squarespace whether you need a domain website or online store make it with Squarespace check out Squarespace comm for a free trial find a link below so today we're answering of you a question because mark h asks is it true that diplomats can get away with murder because of diplomatic immunity while the idea of some form of diplomatic immunity has existed as long as there have been humans banding together in some form the modern rules surrounding this were originally laid out in 1961 at the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations with to date 191 different nations ratifying that treaty pop culture would have you believe that these rules function as something of a get-out-of-jail-free card for any and all crimes that are committed by diplomats time the important question is is that at all true well as with many of the questions we try to answer here the answer is well kinda though the reality as ever is quite nuanced to begin with you might be asking yourself why diplomats are afforded such a blanket immunity in the first place in a nutshell nations have found this necessary to ensure that their diplomats can do their jobs and in extreme cases to stop other nations from being able to manipulate the law in order to harass imprison torture etc diplomats the reason given nation might want to do this bar varies but it often comes down to wanting to get information out of the diplomatic or otherwise just to get back at the diplomats home country for some reason without diplomatic immunity this can easily be done by making up crimes the diplomat is supposed to have committees and things of that nature thus diplomatic immunity grants diplomats and any other agreed upon persons usually said diplomats close family and staff blanket immunity from all local laws of the host country they happen to be staying in diplomats can't be arrested forced to testify in court sued or made to pay taxes and any attempt to do so in anything but the most extreme cases is generally ill-advised in rare cases where nations have gone ahead and done this anyway this usually results in something of an international incidents and in some cases retribution against the other nations diplomats saw their citizens resigning in that country this said if someone with diplomatic immunity attempts to endanger public safety more the like law enforcement are allowed to intervene in this situation to prevent a crime from occurring it's just that the diplomats in question can't be arrested for having attempted whatever criminal act that might be it's also worthy of explicitly mentioning that only relatively high ranking officials enjoy such blanket immunity with a few exceptions lower-ranking officials instead have a type of diplomatic immunity called functional immunity which covers them for any crimes committed while performing their jobs if they commit a crime when going about their non work life however they can be prosecuted the same as anybody else it's also noteworthy but unlike high-ranking officials this immunity does not extend to their families now you might think from this that there must be a slew of diplomats going around smuggling drugs attempting to kill police officers nearing retirement and drowning their own personal secretaries when they become a little too close to an officer and in some cases you'd be correct there have indeed been diplomats who have done at least one of those things however the reality is the most diplomats toe the line pretty closely as to do otherwise could see them not only potentially lose their job but also get into some pretty hot water back home which we're going to get into shortly that said there are some minor crimes that diplomats on the whole seemed happy to leverage their diplomatic immunity to get away with Exhibit A a study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research titled cultures of corruption evidence from diplomatic parking tickets this looks at seemingly the favorite rule to ignore among all diplomats from every nation and that would be paying their parking tickets it turns out the diplomats can be ticketed for speeding and parking illegally but they are under no obligation to pay the tickets nor are there any legal consequences for failing to follow the rules of the road sure the state could revoke their license to drive but thanks to their diplomatic immunity the diplomat can't technically gets in any legal trouble for driving without said license as you might expect from this and the fact that no nation risk an international incident over a parking ticket many diplomats simply don't pay them the study further found that the likelihood of a given diplomat paying a parking ticket or not strongly correlated to how low on Transparency International's Corruption scale their home country's government ranked so for example a Venezuelan diplomat would be drastically more likely to both get a parking ticket and not pay it compared to say a diplomat from the UK or Canada they also noted that regardless of how corrupt a given Diplomats home government is considered countries that did not have a particularly good relationship with the US were more likely to see their diplomats in the u.s. accrue unpaid parking tickets compared to diplomats from countries that did have a good relationship with the United States but again when it comes to tickets and following the rules of the road this does seem to be something diplomats from all nations occasionally like to ignore in fact thanks to the headquarters of the United Nations being in New York City it turns out the city is currently owed in excess of 20 million dollars in unpaid parking tickets from diplomats from various countries with Egyptian diplomats leading the pack owing the city about two million dollars amazingly a whopping 700 thousand of that 2 million dollars was accrued by just four cars what makes these figures even more ridiculous is that if the ticketing officer sees that a given car belongs to a diplomat depending on the officer they occasionally don't even bother to issue a ticket knowing it's usually a waste of time a similar thing can be seen in the UK where for example the US Embassy currently owes the city of London approximately 10 million pounds in unpaid congestion charge fees let alone the 90 million pounds or so all other nations combined oh and don't seem to have any interest in paying further London sees approximately half a million pounds in unpaid parking fees accrue from diplomats from all nations combined every single yeah now at this point you might be wondering where that nuance we alluded to earlier actually is well it turns out that even diplomats representing completely corrupt governments who couldn't care less if their diplomats are smuggling drugs so long as it's lining the pockets of politicians back home well they still have to be a little careful given that as part of the Vienna Convention any host nation can choose to declare a diplomat persona non-grata after this is done the diplomat must leave the country in short order though they are given some buffer time to do this if they choose to instead stick around the host nation can then consider that they have forfeited their diplomatic immunity and prosecute them to their heart's content however declaring a diplomat persona non grata is not something to be done lightly as it can potentially strain relationships between nations depending on the exact circumstances it can also result in one's own citizens and diplomats being harassed in a variety of unpleasant ways if no other reason than spite again one of the main points of diplomatic immunity is to ensure your own country's diplomats can do their job safely and without fear of harassment against themselves or their families another potential consequence to diplomats abusing their immunity is that the host nation can appeal to the diplomats home state to revoke their immunity or appeal to them to prosecute the diplomat themselves band occasionally the home states do acquiesce to these requests in one way or the other for instance in 1997 a republic of georgia diplomat kyoki maharaja was driving drunk and accidentally hit and killed a teenage girl rather than try to protect their at the time second highest ranked diplomat they instead revoked his immunity so he could be prosecuted in the United States he ultimately was imprisoned for three years in the US and then transferred to a prison in Georgia to finish his sentence in another example of what can happen to a diplomat breaking the rules in 2009 a romanian diplomat in singapore ran a red light a popular act by many a diplomat the world over but in this case he hit and killed three people in the process he then fled the scene of the accident and later reported that his car had been stolen it was later determined otherwise with witnesses reporting the diplomat in question was driving the car at the time while Romania didn't officially waive his diplomatic immunity they did prosecute him themselves and seized some of his property to pay the civil suits on top of this seemingly to make an example out of him when he attempted to appeal his three-year prison sentence the Romanian course not only denied the appeal but went ahead and doubled his sentence nasha he ultimately died in prison in yet another case of drunk driving resulting in a death in 2001 a diplomat from Russia working in Canada drove off the road hitting two people and killing one of them he had previously been caught drunk driving twice before with no consequences owing to his diplomatic immunity this time he claimed he was not driving drunk despite all of the evidence the contrary best leveraged his diplomatic immunity and refused to take a breathalyzer test Canadian officials requested that his diplomatic immunity be revoked but the request was denied however once back in Russia beyond losing his job his own government prosecuted him and he spent the next four years in prison moving on to other crimes again diplomatic immunity does indeed extend to covering everything from tax evasion avoiding paying rent mortgage child support or other debts to even the most heinous of crimes including murder enslaving someone gang rape kidnapping extreme physical abuse drug smuggling threatening a terrorist attack and even sex with minors all crimes by the way various diplomats have committed in the past for example in 1999 a Japanese diplomat stationed in Canada called shuuyu-sama Koyie viciously beat his wife then admitted to authorities that had done so and referred to it as no big deal only to then be released without incidents he was later demoted and given a pay cut by the Japanese government in another example in 2005 a United Arab Emirates diplomat working in the US as the director of their scholarship program called Salim almaz Rowi was arrested for attempting to solicit sex from a 13 year old girl that he met online it turns out however the girl was actually a much older police officer when he showed up to meet her the police attempted to arrest him but thanks to his diplomatic immunity went free while he did get fired from his position a few days after the incident he was able to flee back to the United Arab Emirates while it was still being decided whether his diplomatic immunity would be waived it's not clear what happened to him after this moving swiftly on on top of this sort of blanket immunity a much less well-known right afforded to diplomats is the ability to carry something known as a diplomatic bag or diplomatic pouch the idea behind diplomatic bags is to allow diplomats to move sensitive information across international borders freely the rules for this immunity are again laid in the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations where its article 27 states the receiving state shall permit and protect free communication on the part of the mission for all official purposes the official correspondence of the mission shall be inviolable the diplomatic bag shall not be opened or detained and the packages constituting the diplomatic bag must bear visible external marks of their character and may contain only diplomatic documents or articles intended for official use of course many people have ignored this last phrase and are happy to ship all manner of things in this way on that note despite the name a diplomatic bag doesn't necessarily have to be a bag or even something a diplomat can carry thanks to the vague guidelines for what exactly a diplomatic bag is as a result a diplomat can declare anything from a simple paper envelope to a shipping container to be a diplomatic bag like with diplomatic immunity the concept of diplomatic pouches is open to abuse with diplomats in the past using them to smuggle drugs weapons and all manner of illicit things across international borders for an example of a more extreme case in 1984 Nigerian officials allegedly contracted Mossad the Israeli intelligence and Special Operations Institute to use their agents to kidnap a man called Amari Dickie in London dico had once been a prominent member of the former Nigerian government which was overthrown in 1983 in a military coup he then fled to London but the new government wanted him back to try him on supposed crimes involving corruption and stealing billions of dollars in oil revenue from the country whether these charges were true or not the agents managed to find drugged and kidnapped ago before shoving him in a crate along with a physician who was charged with keeping him alive along the journey whether these allegations were true or not they were able to capture him they then put him in a crate along with a doctor who would keep him alive on the journey and they would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for a meddling man named Charles Mauro Mauro had seen an all-ports bulletin from Scotland Yard noting that a kidnapping of a prominent Nigerian man had taken place it also noted Scotland Yard thought it very likely the kidnappers would presently be trying to smuggle the Nigerian out of the country around this same time Morrow found himself with a diplomat from Jiri attempting to ship two rather large crates back to nigeria aboard a Nigeria Airways Boeing 707 that was otherwise empty of passengers besides security guards two quite more oh I just put two and two together so I'm looking out of the window and I can see the space which is these two crates clearly big enough to get a man inside we've got a Nigerian Airways 707 which we don't normally see they don't want the crates manifested soon there would be no record of them having gone through and there was very little of a cargo going on bought the aircraft he goes on to qualify as a diplomatic bag they clearly had to be marked with the words diplomatic bag and they had to be accompanied by an accredited courier with the appropriate documentation it was fair to say they had a Nigerian diplomat I've seen his passport but the crates weren't smart diplomatic bag using this facts even though the diplomat was trying to invoke the rules surrounding diplomatic bags Morrow was safely able to ignore the request and ordered the crates be opens where they found the kidnapped Nigerian he had no shirt on he had a heart monitor on him and he had a tube in his throat to keep his airway open no shoes and socks and handcuffs around his ankles the Israeli anesthetist was in there clearly to keep him alive in an example of what can happen when a given nation flouts the spirit of the rule say when the UK then arrested those involved in the kidnapping Nigeria responded in kind by arresting two British engineers that happen to be in Nigeria at the time these poor fellows were given 14-year prison sentences to match the 10 to 14 year sentences the kidnappers had been given back in the UK on top of this a diplomatic rift formed between Nigeria and the UK that lasted for two years following the incidence of course both the Nigerian and Israeli government's denied that they had any part in the plot however this is a really extreme example and generally diplomats are charged by their home nations with doing their best to follow the laws of the lands that they are made a diplomat in lest they suffer consequences with their home nations in fact the Vienna Convention itself notes that without prejudice to their privileges and immunities it is the duty of all persons enjoying such privileges and immunities to respect the laws and regulations of the receiving state but there are bad eggs in every line of work and diplomats are difference other than perhaps the bad eggs being more likely to reveal their rancid nature owing to the more limited consequences so to conclude diplomatic immunity can indeed potentially function as a get-out-of-jail-free card and many a diplomat seems happy to abuse their power in very minor ways but when it comes to major abusers having to things like potential loss of a job they no doubt worked hard to get in the first place risking being at the center of an international incident potential legal consequences in their home nations and just the fact that most people don't have an inclination to go around murdering people or things like that diplomats usually choose to follow the laws of the lands for their dispatch - now you might not be being sent around the world representing your country but you might need to represent yourself or your business internationally and the internet is the easiest place to do that and you can do it with a beautiful website from the Squarespace and just before we get into the bonus facts for today's episode I want to tell you a bit about how easy that is Squarespace allows you to create a powerful online identity maybe you need a personal website if you're a musician am youtuber or a consultant of some kind or maybe you just need a website for your company well don't fuss around with complicated website builders and code 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launch go to Squarespace comm forward slash brain food and save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain and now it's time for some bonus facts in the aforementioned study looking at parking ticket rates in New York City by various diplomats one interesting little tidbit they noted was that directly following the 9/11 attacks diplomats from countries that were on good terms with the u.s. seemed to have temporarily cleaned up their act with regards to violating the rules of the road in New York City so I really hope you enjoyed that video if you did please do give us a like and don't forget to subscribe also support the show by checking out Squarespace finds a link to that in the description below and as always thank you for watching

Channel: Today I Found Out

Views: 1,073,736

Rating: 4.9135957 out of 5

Keywords: today i found out, tifovidz12, tifo, awesome, facts, didn't know, Diplomatic Immunity, The Problem with Diplomatic Immunity, Diplomat Flees U.S., What is Diplomatic Immunity?, Diplomatic Immunity and Diplomatic Premises

Id: GHuB9-NeF1A

Length: 18min 20sec (1100 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 28 2018