re: #127 Nojay UK

The police wanted to question her about the accident as there may have been a case to be made for a criminal charge of causing death through careless driving which covers incompetence behind the wheel. This can’t be done as the US won’t return her to the UK for this regardless of the questionable claims of diplomatic immunity — it’s normal for any country’s citizens covered by DI to be listed and registered with the authorities and the lady was not on any such list of people. Being family of DI individuals does provide certain rights but diplomatic immunity per se is not automatically extended to them.

I haven’t been following the case, but have some experience with diplomatic/official status, and this seems extremely strange. She had to have some sort of defined residency status in the UK, unless of course the Home Office completely fucked something up, which doesn’t seem exactly impossible.

If someone does have diplomatic status in the country, they cannot be arrested or imprisoned, and the only thing the host country can do is PNG (persona non grata) them back to their home country. The reasoning is that the nations that signed the Vienna Convention didn’t want their diplomats taken hostage on bullshit criminal charges just when a war is breaking out, basically.

There are lesser forms of immunity, like limited transactional immunity, where people are immune to prosecution for anything performed as part of their official duties, but this is obviously meaningless for an accompanying spouse and is generally for employees of international organizations or visiting foreign government.