US diplomat's wife flees home claiming diplomatic immunity after fatal collision

Typically, friendly countries actually tend to waive diplomatic immunity for minor diplomats / embassy staff etc, but usually not the ambassador or senior diplomats, where the crime / legal issue is not directly involved with their diplomatic duty.

There's no particular reason why the US would inflexibly stick to diplomatic immunity to someone involved in a road traffic accident. It would just allow the police or coroner to conclude their inquiry and would not have created all this negative PR. It's certainly going to spin into a big tabloid mess in the UK.

It's pretty unlikely that someone in a genuine motor accident would end up with a custodial sentence. It sounds like someone who was used to driving on the other side of the road. I'm not entirely sure what the setup at the base she was coming from was but, I think they tend to follow UK driving rules, but often US vehicles.

I would also assume this could have implications for things like claims for compensation etc. Even insurance.

There's been growing irritation in Brussels (The city. Not the metaphor for the EU), for example, with various countries that would tend to have somewhat oligarch-driven governments allowing diplomats to get away with all sorts of crazy stuff under diplomatic immunity conventions. A lot of it had to do with road traffic incidents and damage to property etc etc, refusal to pay vast amounts of parking fines and all of those kinds of things. Some of it was more serious but a lot of it was just seen as somewhat obnoxious behaviour by diplomats being excused by their governments.

She was coming out of an unnamed airbase, which if it were a US one in the UK would tend to be like an American enclave inside. You typically have a lot of US cars, busses and everything else in use, although I think they do drive on the left i.e. the UK side, but you would often see a lot of left-hand-drive US vehicles in use.

Even internally goods and prices of various things are at US levels often without any kind of sales tax i.e. very low compared to the UK, particularly for things like petrol, alcohol etc.

I remember visiting the abandoned NATO base, which was largely US, in Iceland and the buildings were being converted to Icelandic use and literally everything had been done to US specs - the wiring, plumbing, appliances (all 120V not 230V), fire hydrants like a US city, all the street furniture and so on was entirely American.

The Icelanders were in the process of reusing buildings for civilian purposes - so they were being completely rewired to present day European specs, replumbed, reinsulated etc etc.

It was just bizarre to see all the US road markings, signage, abandoned trucks, cars and so on completely out of context.

Even all the appliances in the buildings that hadn't been converted were all totally useless as they were kinda big old 70s/80s American stuff on wrong voltage.

Some odd stuff in terms of international representation, bases and diplomacy.

All that aside, though it does show a certain degree of arrogance and contempt for the UK's "local" law enforcement and due process and I would fully expect that to be how it's interpreted in the UK media circles.

The nice and friendly approach would have been to agree to fully cooperate with the police investigation. Even if she were prosecuted, they could still invoke immunity and just accept that she be recalled to the US.

All they've done by just sprinting her back to the US of A is both come across as rather arrogant and also feed a conspiracy theory about what is most likely just a tragic accident.

splinter65 wrote: »

Post links of incidents were Ireland or the UK waived diplomatic immunity. You’re so sure they would. You must have evidence?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/12/19/husband-british-un-diplomat-arrested-accusations-domestic-violence/

I'm not aware of any incident involving Irish diplomats where a scenario like this has ever cropped up. It's actually not something you'd tend to encounter very much with most diplomatic corps.

Even this incident sounds like a road traffic accident, not any kind of deliberate act. Fleeing the UK doesn't make any sense.

Takes a lot to p1ss me off but this is certainly one of those things

Yup! Because Trump era diplomats have behaved totally normally at all times and are above any kind of criticism. We all know that.

I get a bit fed up with the tribalism in the US and UK political sphere. No administration is exempt from critical comment. At least not in the free world anyway.