In the staff report, What’s the story on diplomatic immunity?, guest contributor Bricker notes that diplomatic immunity isn’t all its cracked up to be: ambassadors and administrative staff can still be pursued under the laws of their home country, prosecuted where they are guests if the home country waives immunity, and are subject to unilateral expulsion; they can even receive traffic tickets.
My question is: “Does the UN headquarters (located in New York City) constitute a special case?” In the 1970s at least, there were a number of complaints regarding unpaid traffic tickets. I see from this CNN link that the controversy extended into 1997. Fans of Batman know that the Joker once secured immunity from (heh) Ayatollah Khomeini as a UN diplomat.
Could the US expel a UN diplomat who has committed crimes on US soil? Did the NYPD ever work things out with Libyan and later Russian parking violators?
Here is a Wikipedia link about this which seems reasonable to me. My dad worked for the UN in NY from 1946 to 1975, not as a diplomat.
There are diplomats assigned by countries to the UN, just as they are assigned to another country. They have diplomatic immunity. As the article mentions, UN staff members, whether US citizens like my Dad or from somewhere else, do not. Diplomats work for their host countries, while staff works for the UN (ignoring the common Russian spy of the Cold War era.)
Perhaps you mean UN territory itself. That is considered foreign territory, and NY police are not allowed. The UN has its own security staff (that’s where my father started) and own postage for mail sent from the UN. They use US currency, though.
I don’t recall a time when NY police were invited on the premises for an investigation, but I suppose it is possible.
Back in August 1941, the American government staged a fire in the Japanese Embassy. Firemen forced the staff to evacuate and while the real firemen were fighting the fire, three intelligence agents broke into the cryptography safe and photographed the Japanese codes. This seems a pretty flagrant violation of the immunity of what was at the time a neutral power’s embassy. Did the US ever receive any diplomatic protests or threats of reprisals for this act?
Not quite right. It has been recognized that embassies are not the territory of the sending state. This is best exemplified by the case brought by the Iran hostages. They argued that they could sue Iran in the US because the kidnapping occurred on US territory, which is a prerequisite under the relevant section of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. The Court dismissed the case because it is well-accepted under international law that embassies are part of the territory of the receiving state.
BTW, I have collected a lot of resources on abuse of diplomatic immunity for my upcoming, and very related, report on the diplomatic pouch. I’ll check on answers to these other questions when I have my resources handy, assuming they have not been answered in the interim.
There has been a weird case some years ago in France. A man who was being prosecuted for trafficking weapons and embezzlement (IIRC) turned up to have just been granted the status of diplomat at the UNESCO (situated in Paris) by the african country he was doing his traffick with. So, he couldn’t be prosecuted. Besides, being a diplomat at a UN body, he couldn’t be declared “persona non grata” , either, since diplomats at the UN are aknowledged by the UN, not by the host country, and anyway couldn’t be expelled from the country since he was a french citizen. So , he could safely stay home, and laugh at the prosecutors.
Quite a conundrum. You’d think the UN would bounce him. If the UN did so, he be at the mercy of the French. And in a sense, he would be worse off, because he probably would not be permitted to leave the country to escape prosecution.
BTW, Bricker, another excellent job on a tough topic.
My fave example of the (attempted) mis-use of diplomatic immunity was when Adrienne Brown, wife of James Brown, was stopped for driving under the influence of drugs, speeding, and criminal trespass in Georgia.
She asked her lawyers to file for diplomatic immunity because … wait for it … her husband is the “Ambassador of Funk”. :smack:
In 1986 the city council in Augusta had held a “James Brown Appreciation Day”, during which U.S. Representative Douglas Barnard of Georgia delivered a speech in which he stated that “James is indeed our No. 1 ambassador” - so therefore Adrienne figured she was immune from prosecution. :rolleyes:
Yes, you can issue a traffic ticket. But you can’t make the diplomat pay. If he doesn’t want to, and the ambassador or home country don’t care, he can use them to wallpaper his room with.
Actually, you CAN make them pay. It might result in some sticky relations with the country in question, but it’s all negotiable. And, so far as I know, usually complied with since it is a legal request, as opposed to requests for things the convention doesn’t allow.
I suspect the thing about “you can’t make them pay” is that you can’t arrest them, so the authorities are limited in what they can do to coerce payment if the [del]jerk[/del] diplomatic doesn’t want to co-operate. OTOH, as noted, most countries do not want their diplomats involved in unpleasant news stories or awkward activities. Such things get in the way of the actual duties, create a bad image of the country (thus potentially affected trade and tourism), etc. Plus, of course, if the offenses are serious enough, or cause enough public outcry, the US government can expel the diplomat or can even sever relationship with the country.
So, as others have said, the diplomat gets a ticket and the Department of State is informed. If the diplomat gets too many tickets, there can be consequences:
I was making a distinction between the UN territory itself and the embassies of UN members in New York. It seems odd to consider the UN as an embassy - there is no home state, for instance. I’m not sure, but I suspect embassies use the postage of the host country, while inside the UN UN postage is used, for instance.
Thanks for the link about the police. My father knew the people in charge of UN security quite well, and I think I would have heard of any incursions, but I just assumed there was a rule. The instance I remember where there might have been NY police action was when someone shot a mortar or something at the Secretariat building in the '60s.
Of course you are correct. UN headquarters is not an embassy in the strict legal sense. But as you can see from the Headquarters agreement, its treatment is similar to that of embassies. Moreover:
Headquarters Agreement
I don’t know about the postage issue. But here is a discussion of the United Nations Postal Administration.
And note that the UN’s development of its own postal service was contemplated in the headquarters agreement:
So the UN has established its own postage with the consent and assistance of the host countries.
