2023-06-05 15:54:51
France will request on Monday June 5 the lifting of the immunity of the Lebanese ambassador in Paris, Rami Adwan. He is under investigation for rape and intentional violence, we learned from a diplomatic source.
This immunity gives members of the diplomatic corps and their families a special status, since they are not subject to the justice of the country to which they are expatriated. These provisions were formalized by the Vienna Convention of 1961, the aim being to allow these professionals to carry out their missions while avoiding the pressures that the host country could exert on them.
Diplomats cannot be arrested, unlike consular staff who remain subject to possible binding measures in the event of a serious crime. In addition to protecting people, immunity also applies to official premises. Thus, French buildings abroad and foreign enclosures in France cannot be searched.
Hostage taking in Iran
This rule, however, has not always prevented diplomats from being attacked by their host state. This was particularly the case of the staff of the American embassy taken hostage for 444 days in Iran, in 1979.
Before modern times, many states and civilizations recognized the need to protect foreign emissaries, in order to allow the flow of information. Traditional mechanisms for doing so could be based on strict codes of hospitality that forbade harming a guest or on the sending of priests as emissaries.
The Romans enshrined these principles in their laws, guaranteeing the safety of ambassadors even in times of war. However, the level of protection has varied over time and space.
A poorly respected immunity in the Middle Ages
In the Middle Ages, immunity was still guaranteed by Roman law, but it was difficult to enforce. A papal envoy in Basel is for example “thrown into the Rhine from the top of a tower” between 1325 and 1327, underlines the historian Jean-Marie Moeglin in a article entitled The place of messengers and ambassadors in princely diplomacy at the end of the Middle Ages. This Vatican emissary, who was trying to escape by swimming, was then chased by boat and killed.
Nicollo de Fieschi, sent by the King of England to Avignon, seat of the papacy in 1343, was removed, which might have “had consequences on the assertion of principle of this diplomatic immunity”, continues the historian. « In the meantime, it was still useful to have safe-conducts of various kinds; even these were not always effective”, he concludes.
During the Renaissance, permanent embassies became more common, and the immunity granted to their staff extended. States rely on the notion of extraterritoriality – which allows diplomats and their residences to be treated as if they were not on the territory of their host country – in order to justify the legal exemption of their emissaries.
Colonization spreads the principle of diplomatic immunity
The jurists of the 17th and 18th centuries argued for the importance of the mission of diplomats, responsible in particular for maintaining the peace, to justify the immunity from which they benefited. In order to ensure the safety of their emissaries, some countries signed bilateral treaties, such as England and the Ottoman Empire in the 17th century, which agreed to prohibit searches in the British embassy and allow the Christian ambassador to consume wine.
The French Revolution, if it calls into question many elements of the Old Regime, on the other hand reinforces one of its principles, diplomatic inviolability. European colonial expansion then ensured the dissemination of this idea throughout the world.
From that time on, many jurists sought to combat extraterritoriality, which could notably be used to offer asylum to people wanted by the local government. This was, for example, the case of Julian Assangetook refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy when British justice wanted to extradite him to Sweden.
To waive immunity, the host country must make a request to the home state of the offending diplomat. A rare situation, as governments seek to protect their emissaries, but not unprecedented: in 2002, a driver from the Mongolian embassy responsible for a fatal accident was tried and sentenced in France.
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