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Diplomatic Immunity

Report From Venezuela On The Case Of Political Prisoner Alex Saab

I was invited by Camilla Saab, the spouse of the kidnapped Venezuelan Diplomat, Alex Saab, to attend the international conference titled: "Lawfare Against Venezuela: Three Years After the Kidnapping of Diplomat Alex Saab."  This conference, sponsored by the Free Alex Saab Movement, brought activists and revolutionaries from as far as Canada, Slovenia, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Spain, Nigeria, England and the United States, to name a few. On June 14th, 2023, a public forum was held at the Jose Felix Ribas Hall, Teatro Teresa Carreno, where invited speakers presented their support for the immediate release of Alex Saab, denouncing the U.S. government for its violation of international law regarding the treatment of diplomatic representatives of foreign nations.

Ruling In Alex Saab Case Ignores Evidence To Support Immunity

I have been involved with Alex Saab’s legal fight over his assertion of diplomatic immunity since its earliest stages. As is to be expected in a case whose very origins are founded on the interference in the domestic affairs of Venezuela by the United States, there have been many inexplicable judicial decisions since Alex Saab’s initial arrest in Cape Verde on June 12, 2020. The recent decision handed down by Judge Robert Scola in Miami is probably the hardest to understand and justify. On December 23, 2022, Judge Scola denied Special Envoy Alex Saab’s motion to dismiss the indictment issued against him in 2019.

Diplomatic Immunity

After Harry Dunn was killed by a car that emerged from a US base in Northamptonshire on 27 August 2019, the driver, Anne Sacoolas, claimed diplomatic immunity and within three weeks was whisked out of the country on a US military aircraft, with the British police only being informed after she’d left. Sacoolas eventually appeared by video at the Old Bailey last month, but is unlikely to serve the suspended sentence she received. The US government refused an extradition request to return her to the UK to face trial, even though her diplomatic immunity arose from a legal ‘anomaly’ that has now been closed. The State Department said that extraditing Sacoolas ‘would render the invocation of diplomatic immunity a practical nullity and would set an extraordinarily troubling precedent’. Yet last month the US denied immunity to the Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab, charged with conspiring to launder $350 million via a bank in Florida.

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