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No immunity for crime

Jul 25,2017 - Last updated at Jul 25,2017

The refusal of the Israeli embassy in Amman to hand over one of its guards for questioning by Jordanian authorities, pleading diplomatic immunity, brings to the fore the issue of immunity granted to diplomats no matter their crimes.

The guard shot to death a Jordanian youth doing some carpentry work in the embassy compound on Monday and a doctor who happened to be there at the time of the shooting.

Diplomatic immunity is indeed codified as a binding international law in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961). It is meant to afford safety and security to diplomats while they conduct their normal diplomatic functions in the receiving state.

Governments may waive this immunity when a serious crime is committed by one of their diplomats serving abroad, one that is not related or connected to their diplomatic duties.

In the present case, the killing of the two cannot be claimed as connected in any way with the Israeli guard’s diplomatic duties.

Firsthand information suggests that the guard in question was simply trigger happy. But diplomatic immunity is not meant to be a licence to kill.

Diplomats cannot enjoy preferential treatment when they commit a crime.

The Israeli embassy could have lifted the diplomatic immunity of its guard, especially when all the Jordanian authorities wanted was to question him in order to get detailed information about the killings.

If the Israeli government felt confident that the guard in question did no evil, it had no reason to be concerned about him being interrogated by the Jordanian authorities.

The government has the duty to explain to the families of the victims, as well as to the entire country, how and why two of its nationals were gunned down by a foreign embassy guard.

 

Jordanian authorities succeeded in investigating the killings independently and the Israeli suspect was allowed to return to Israel because of diplomatic immunity, but it is hoped that his country will do its own investigation and mete out the deserved punishment.

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