US Hypocrisy Over Diplomatic Immunity

“There is a remarkable and almost charming egalitarianism in it. Everybody is treated in exactly the same disrespectful, casually brutal, and arrogant fashion.”

—Defense Attorney Ron Kuby about how “standard procedure” works for arrests in the United Police States of America

The diplomatic brouhaha between the US and India over a federal arrest and multiple strip-search and cavity search of a high-ranking Indian consular official in New York has exposed the astonishing hypocrisy of the US when it comes to the issue of diplomatic immunity, even as it has also exposed the ugly, brutal and sadistic truth about what passes for a “justice system” in 21st Century America..

India’s government is outraged not just at the abusive treatment of Deputy Consul General for Political, Economic, Commercial and Women’s Affairs, Devyani Khobragade, who was arrested a few days ago by US State Department Agents and charged with lying on a visa application for her Indian housekeeper. It is claiming that as a diplomat in the country’s New York consulate, she is entitled to diplomatic immunity.

The US is denying that she has diplomatic immunity, because she is a consular official, not an embassy official. The difference is important. Larger countries like the US and India often have many consular offices in cities of larger countries, primarily to handle visa and other issues, both for citizens of the home country, and for citizens of the host country who may wish to travel to the home country. But each country is allowed only one embassy in a foreign country, with the primary purpose being conducting diplomacy. Embassies are thus always located in the capital city of the host nation.

Denying Deputy Consul General Khobragade immunity might be okay, because under the Vienna Conventions governing Embassies and Consulates, consular officials only are granted limited immunity. Specifically, they are immune from prosecution for crimes involving their performance of consular business, but not for crimes outside of their official duties. Embassy employees, however, have broader immunity. The only exception, which applies to both Embassy and Consular officials, is “serious crimes,” such as rape or murder, where a host country can over-ride immunity, even of an ambassador.

Arguably, Deputy Consul General Khobragade’s alleged crime of lying on a visa document (about the amount she was planning to pay in wages) for an Indian woman she was bringing to the US as a housekeeper, would fall outside of her official duties, which would allow the US to prosecute her, (though I suppose a case could also be made that as an on-call envoy, having in-home round-the-clock childcare might be considered part of the job of deputy consul general—something that it might be worth seeing how us consular officials handle).

However, the US has often taken a different view of such matters, when it is on the other side of a case.

A notable example was the arrest in Pakistan, by Lahore municipal police, of Raymond Davis, a CIA contract worker who was charged with murder for shooting (in the back) and then executing with point blank head shots, two young men on motorcycles who, apparently, were monitoring his actions on behalf of Pakistan’s spy service, the Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI). When first arrested at the scene and brought to the station house for booking, Davis claimed he was an employee at the US Consulate [1] in Lahore, and that he had diplomatic immunity because of that.

Going with that assertion, the US demanded his release, claiming diplomatic immunity. Apparently, driving down a crowded street in Lahore in civilian clothes, heavily armed with multiple automatic weapons, fully loaded large clips and “cop-killer” bullets, with night-vision equipment, cameras, disguises and makeup, and in an unmarked car, which is how police captured him, was just “official consular business” for Davis.

Never mind the absurdity of that mental image. President Obama, at a press conference days after the shooting incident and arrest, somehow managing to keep a straight face, said, ““With respect to Davis, our diplomat in Pakistan, we’ve got a very simple principle here that every country in the world that is party to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations has upheld in the past and should uphold in the future. If our diplomats are in another country, then they are not subject to that country’s local prosecution. We respect it with respect to diplomats who are here. We expect Pakistan, that’s a signatory should recognize Davis as a diplomat, to abide by the same convention.”

Realizing that they’d made a bone-headed mistake from the outset in having Davis identified as a consular employee, the State Department tried to submit a backdated document to Lahore prosecutors claiming that in fact Davis was an employee of the US Embassy in Islamabad, not just a lowly consular employee in Lahore.

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