Mirror Lawyer : Are members of the diplomatic corps immune from criminal proceedings?
Dear Mirror Lawyer, In a country where the rule of law reigns, all persons are equal before the law.
This implies that the highest officials of state, as well as the lowest person, are all subject to the law. Are officials of the various embassies with diplomatic credentials also subject to the law when they commit criminal or civil wrongs in Ghana?
Kwame Danso, Sushyen,
Dear Danso, Under the 1992 Constitution of Ghana, the concept of the rule of law has been endorsed as part of the laws of the country. The beauty about the rule of law is that it does not discriminate against anyone.
Everyone is equal before the law and the same punishment meted out to a labourer is required to be meted out to an official of state.
However, in order to avoid interferences with the work of representatives of sovereign states in a country, the Vienna Protocol was adopted by the United Nations to give some level of immunity to such representatives of sovereigns in countries from the civil and criminal jurisdictions of the courts.
By the provisions of the Vienna Convention, which has been adopted into our local legislation as the Diplomatic Immunity Act, no civil action or criminal charges could be brought in any court in Ghana against any diplomat unless the ambassador waives the immunity or the diplomat engages in commercial activity in a purely private capacity outside his official function.
In the case of ARMON AND ANOTHER v. KATZ [1976] 2 GLR 115, the plaintiff, a minor, sustained serious injuries in a motor accident involving a car negligently driven by the first defendant and owned by his father, the second defendant, the First Secretary of the Israeli Embassy in Accra.
The plaintiff, therefore, sued per her next friend, her mother, for damages for negligence and in her pleadings averred that the second defendant's vehicle had been insured under the Motor Vehicles (Third Party Insurance) Act, 1958.
The defendants applied to the High Court for an order to set aside service on them of the writ of summons on grounds of diplomatic immunity.
By his affidavit, the second defendant deposed that he possessed a Ghana Government diplomatic card issued on November 19, 1964 and signed by the Principal Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the effect that he, the second defendant, was entitled to the "courtesies and privileges of a person of a diplomatic status."
In the course of the proceedings, the trial court received a letter from the Principal Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the effect that the second defendant (as the First Secretary of the Israeli Embassy) and his family were entitled to full diplomatic privileges and immunities as laid down by the Vienna Convention scheduled to the Diplomatic Immunities Act, 1962 (Act 148).
The Court of Appeal held that the defendants were immune from any suit emanating from the courts in Ghana and, therefore, action could not be brought against them.
This protocol is qualified by the fact that although a diplomatic agent cannot be sued or tried in the court of the state he or she is posted to, in appropriate cases, he or she can be tried and punished in his own country for acts or omission committed in the assigned country.
So it is not completely correct to say diplomatic agents are above the law. The Vienna Protocol grants them immunity from suits and prosecutions in the country they are posted to but when they come back to their own country, they are susceptible to the civil and criminal jurisdiction of the courts in their own countries even for offences committed outside while on posting.
