Not paying fines is daily business. But diplomats can also kill locals without being charged: See this guy The diplomats leave the country, their embassy receives an angry letter, and that's that.

Tens of thousands of dollars is nothing. Transport for London has a long standing issue of over 100 million pounds of unpaid congestion charges over the last 20 years: questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-statements/detail‌​/…

@knallfrosch The sentiment of your comment is sound, but that specific example is ridiculous. "Opened door too fast" is not a crime, so at most this is manslaughter (in the US, not sure what Germany would call it but it was not deliberate). Once the person leaves the country, what is Germany going to do about it? Invade so they can punish one guy for an accidental death? Not going to happen... Now, if that diplomat went around killing people as some sort of assassin/agent then they would 100% face legal consequences if caught.

@SnakeDoc "Now, if that diplomat went around killing people as some sort of assassin/agent then they would 100% face legal consequences if caught." I would not be so confident. One of the reasons to give covert operatives a diplomatic cover is to get them out of the country without going to prison if they get caught killing someone. The aggrieved country might try to covertly assassinate that person in return, but that is a very uncertain proposition and is very uncommon.

@SnakeDoc A better example of diplomatic immunity is the death of Harry Dunn: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Harry_Dunn

@ohwilleke Life isn't a movie. Foreign Agents are not allowed to kill on US territory, period. If they do, they will face legal consequences if caught. Diplomatic cover is specifically about plausible deniability for espionage and to provide a, on paper, valid reason for someone to be in the country. A spy, flatly, cannot just kill someone and fly away unless they are not caught (in which case it's no different than any other murder).

@SnakeDoc Show we an example of when that has happened or any legal authority that says so. There are no such cases.

@ohwilleke How about you show me an example where a government assassin went around killing people, was caught, and then released back to their country. There are no such cases.

@SnakeDoc "On-duty police officer Yvonne Fletcher was murdered in London in 1984, by a person shooting from inside the Libyan embassy during a protest." "In 2018, Saudi American journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed by Saudi officials inside the Saudi embassy in Turkey. The Turkish police were not allowed to enter the premises days after this death. Furthermore, a Saudi government vehicle with diplomatic license plates was spotted entering a park."

@SnakeDoc ""Top-level ambassadors and their immediate deputies can commit crimes — from littering to murder — and remain immune from prosecution in the U.S. courts. . . . At the lower levels, employees of foreign embassies are granted immunity only from acts related to their official duties." thoughtco.com/diplomatic-immunity-definition-4153374

@SnakeDoc "the convention says that a diplomat “shall not be liable to any form of arrest of detention,” and that he “shall enjoy immunity from the criminal jurisdiction of the receiving state.” So, yes, in theory, they can get away with murder." heritage.org/crime-and-justice/commentary/….

@SnakeDoc The recent Canada-India dispute involves credible evidence of Indian diplomatic involvement in the assassination of a man in Canada for which no prosecution was threatened. scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/3238553/…

@ohwilleke The examples you have produced do not demonstrate the point you are attempting to make. The killer(s) were whisked away before capture, and fled the country. In none of your presented articles is there an assassin roaming the streets, killing people, then brandishing their diplomatic credentials and moving onto the next victims. Real life isn't a Lethal Weapon plot or something...

@SnakeDoc: That's because the receiving state either could've or actually did declare the offending diplomat persona non grata, which obligates the diplomat to leave the country, and still does not expose them to criminal liability (unless they refuse to leave).

@SnakeDoc ""Opened door too fast" is not a crime, so at most this is manslaughter" - So it is a crime then, opening a door and somehow killing someone with it. It doesn't need to be a crime to be an element of a crime.

@SnakeDoc As a matter of law, espionage charges don't invalidate diplomatic immunity status, nor do murder charges, nor any criminal charges. You can't bring such charges anyways since they're immune from any of it. As a matter of politics, disregarding diplomatic immunity and making an arrest anyways exposes your own diplomats to retaliation, which can escalate all the way to war.

Does anyone have an example where an assassin went around killing people and claiming diplomatic immunity, then kept killing? This is a ridiculous debate to be having.

@SnakeDoc You are missing the point. If the assassin gets caught and is identified by the host country, the assassin can be declared a persona non grata and forced to leave the country. But the assassin can't be prosecuted criminally for the killing (or possibly many killings) that already happened before the assassin is caught. The difference between being deported if caught, and being incarcerated for the rest of your life or executed, if caught, is huge. And if that person is killing with the approval of the diplomat's country, the assassin won't be punished at home after being deported.

@SnakeDoc As the examples given show, this is indeed how these events actually take place. The fact that you find it impossible doesn't mean that this isn't how it actually works. Diplomatic immunity is terribly counterintuitive, but it is still how it works. Diplomat immunity extends to intentional murder in the first degree and is applied in that way when these cases come up (admittedly not often because diplomats are not particularly murderous violent people on average - people prone to that more often become soldiers). You offer no evidence to counter the examples and law to the contrary.

@SnakeDoc I've not mentioned examples of lots of very egregious serial rapists and serious intentional assaults short of murder and other serious malicious non-physical injury crimes (e.g. slavery) where diplomatic immunity is also routinely honored, but they are out there too and support the general concept that this really is how it works.