Post-Nuremberg, in the wake of the death of honest jurisprudence, we take what we can get. In Western Europe, what we get is idiotic hypocrisy.
In the case of Belgium, that means diplomats can go to jail.
An Antwerp court sentenced Assadolah Assadi, an Iranian diplomat formerly based in Vienna, Austria to the maximum 20 years behind bars on Thursday. It is the first time an Iranian official has been put on trial and sentenced by an EU member state for terrorism offenses.
Reporters were not allowed into the courtroom to hear the verdict, with the whole building heavily guarded by police backed by armored vehicles and helicopters.
“The ruling shows two things: A diplomat doesn’t have immunity for criminal acts… and the responsibility of the Iranian state in what could have been carnage,” Belgian prosecution lawyer Georges-Henri Beauthier told reporters outside the court.
All else not considered, this ruling could be fine and well. The Mossad dupe Iranian diplomat may have conspired to commit a terror bombing – it’s Europe in [current year]. But, all things considered, what about US responsibility for real carnage and US diplomatic immunity for criminal acts? From Englandistan:
The woman accused of killing British teen Harry Dunn was “employed by an intelligence agency in the US” at the time of the fatal road traffic accident that left the 19-year-old dead, a court has heard.
A Virginia court was told that Anne Sacoolas worked for US intelligence when she fatally collided with Dunn on his motorbike in August 2019. Her barrister said that her employment was “especially a factor” in her leaving the UK.
Sacoolas fled the UK due to “security issues”, her barrister said, adding that she didn’t believe she would receive a fair trial because of the media attention the case would attract.
The comments were made on Wednesday during Sacoolas’s application to dismiss a civil claim for damages made against her by the Dunn family.
Dunn was 19 when Sacoolas’s car crashed into his motorbike outside US military base RAF Croughton in Northamptonshire, where her husband worked as a CIA operative.
Sacoolas was charged with causing death by dangerous driving after the crash but returned to the US, claiming diplomatic immunity. Former president Donald Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, refused a UK Home Office extradition request in January 2020, and last week the new Biden administration said the decision was final.
So much for the vaunted difference between Drumpf and Creepy Joe, huh? This case is very sad and legally ridiculous. Sacoolas has a far better defense than contrived when convenient diplomatic immunity. She, like most people from Aiken County, SC, is likely borderline retarded (proof she might work in US intel) and she, like the rest of them, simply cannot operate an automobile – on either side of the road.
The good news is that ID2020 is steaming along, soon to transform us all into obedient robots, until such time we are replaced by real robots. And I think the question of robot immunity for killing humans answers itself.
