Harry Dunn Case Redux: Cosplay Justice Was Good Enough

 

In the end, all it took to reconcile the Dunn family's demands for justice with the UK government's political embarrassment over the reality of diplomatic immunity was a pretense of a criminal trial. 

Pretend that the defendant is present in a UK court room, and listen to someone in a powdered wig pronounce a stern suspended sentence (while acknowledging she is powerless to impose any actual sentence in reality) and all the players will go away more or less satisfied. 

Since we're learning lessons, here are two important lessons that I think my own government is missing. 

First, we should take a big cue from how the UK handled immunity when one of its diplomats killed a cyclist in a road traffic accident, which was by the offending diplomatic leaving the host country and neither he nor the UK ever mentioning it again. What, no lawsuit? No request to waive immunity? No extradition request? No moralizing? No public vendetta against the diplomat involved? No, there was none of that. 

Second, we should adopt the UK's practice of denying the public any information about incidents in which it claimed immunity on behalf of its diplomatic staff. Take a look at the quick brush-off the Foreign Office gave to a 2014 request in FOI release: diplomatic immunity claimed by British diplomatic staff:

FOI ref: 0995-14 explains that diplomatic immunity has been claimed on a small number of occasions and if the details were to be released it could lead to the individuals concerned being identified. It has therefore been withheld under section 40 (personal information) of the Freedom of Information Act

"Personal information," right. You wouldn't want any personal information, or even identities, getting out or else the UK press might stalk and harass your people. 

If we're in a lesson-learning mood, I hope those two lessons will get absorbed over here. Next time - and of course there will be a next time - just stonewall.