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This has been the case for Saudi authorities possibly responsible for Jamal Khashoggi’s death. Afforded to diplomatic persons, buildings, vehicles and carriages by internationally acknowledged conventions, vast exemptions from penal law offer all kinds of opportunity to states that seek to silence their critics overseas. Tayyip Erdogan called the Khashoggi assassination “a clear violation and blatant abuse of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations” adding that failure to punish those responsible for the murder could set a very dangerous precedent.Īlthough crime under diplomatic shield is nothing new in history, in a world where autocratic regimes are on the rise worldwide, a criminal turn of diplomatic missions may be underway. The murder sent shockwaves to the world and, especially, political dissidents living in exile. It has been a year since the killing of Khashoggi in a building protected by diplomatic immunity. They implied that Dundar could share the same fate.
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The exiled Turkish journalist Can Dundar received a message last October on Twitter with his name mentioned in the post: “Could you please drop by the consulate? We want to try something”, referencing the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist who had been the victim of a gruesome manslaughter in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul shortly before.
Diplomatic immunity murder series#
This is the first part of a two part series on international law and how diplomatic space becomes a crime scene.