Did Harry Dunn Case Save the Chinese Consul General in Manchester From Arrest?

The violence at China’s consulate in Manchester was unacceptable.

6 Chinese consulate officials, including the Consul General, are being removed from the UK following the disgraceful incident in October. pic.twitter.com/nxyqtJ1627

— James Cleverly🇬🇧 (@JamesCleverly) December 14, 2022

So after two months of thinking it over, the UK has finally decided to expel the Chinese consular officials who roughed up a British National (Hong Kong) protester outside the consulate. Am I completely crazy for thinking it might not be a coincidence that the decision came one week after the sentencing in the Harry Dunn case? 

Call me crazy, but I notice that consular officers are not accorded diplomatic immunity. They have their own consular immunity under international law, but that is more limited than the diplomatic kind, especially in that it does not include immunity to the criminal jurisdiction of the host country except in cases directly relating to consular functions. 

In other words, those consular officers in Manchester could have been arrested and prosecuted. That is not just a theoretical option. A few years we arrested the Indian CG in New York, and Italy convicted in absentia and extradited a U.S. consular officer who had served in Milan. 

Well, well, well. What's all this then? Rt Hon Cleverly is missing a good one here because he certainly could have arrested those Chinese offenders, just as surely as he could not have arrested the American driver in the Dunn case, since she enjoyed the diplomatic kind of immunity. 

That example of the U.S. Vice Consul in Milan is especially pertinent since her case turned on exactly this point that a consular officer - vice a diplomat or an Admin and Technical staffer - does not enjoy immunity from criminal jurisdiction except for acts related to their consular function. The lawsuit she filed against Hillary Clinton (here) confirms that she was serving in Milan as a consular officer, having previously served as a Political Officer (a diplomatic agent) in Rome. 

Of course, as a consular officer, her status under international law did create this interesting argument in her defense:

"De Sousa categorically denies having any involvement in the alleged kidnapping of Abu Omar. She also rejects the allegation that she was a principal planner of the alleged operation. Even if the allegations were true, though, her actions clearly fell within the scope of her official duties and thereby entitle her to diplomatic/consular immunity."

I believe lawyers call that kind of thing 'arguing in the alternative,' as in, “my client the Consular Officer didn’t do it, but, even if she did do it, that crime would have been part of her job and therefore covered by the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.” The Chinese CG might have tried that defense. 

Getting back to the UK Foreign Office and Rt Hon Cleverly, I just wonder whether his long delay in booting those Chinese officials from the UK had something to do with the timing of last week’s judicial empty gesture in the Harry Dunn case.     

Did the UK decide not to arrest and charge those Chinese gentlemen due, at least in part, to the complete impossibility of ever explaining to the public that the American driver in the Dunn case had immunity and the Chinese Consul General in Manchester did not? 

That could have turned into quite the public opinion disaster, and just as they had gotten the Dunn case settled. Don’t tell me there aren’t any FO or PM staffers who would have thought along just those lines.

Stranger things have happened in government.