Diplomatic spat

The Iranian government has accused Germany of ignoring diplomatic immunity and international conventions: Frankfurt prosecutors are investigating an Iranian diplomat accused of having sexually harassed a ten-year old girl.

"According to our findings so far, on June 26 a mother reported to the police that on the eve of the previous day an unknown man had been trying to caress and kiss her daughter," prosecutor Doris Möller-Scheu told DW. The mother made a complaint of sexual harassment by an unknown attacker.

One week later, the girl recognized the man on a playground in Frankfurt. The mother followed him and asked passer-bys to help her. When the police arrived, the man was arrested. When it turned out he had a diplomatic passport, he was then released again.

No full immunity

The German Foreign Office has since then told the Frankfurt prosecutors that the man only holds partial immunity. There's a difference between full immunity - which also includes private matters - and immunity with respect only to his job. "Accredited diplomats always have full immunity," Thomas Giegerich of the Walther-Schücking Institute for international law at Kiel University explained to DW.

The worst possible scenario for them would be to be declared a "persona non grata" and be asked to leave the country. Consular officers however only have partial immunity, which means that they will have to answer in court if the crime they're accused of has nothing to do with their diplomatic work.

In the Frankfurt case, this means that the Iranian diplomat would go on trial should the allegations be substantiated. Crimes committed in his private life would be treated by German law. "That's why we have started the investigation," prosecutor Müller-Scheu told DW. "But so far it's only an initial suspicion and nothing more than that."

Tehran protests

The case is causing frictions bewteen Berlin and Tehran. "We have summoned the German ambassador in Tehran and passed on our complaint;" Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Hassan Qashqavi told Iranian news agency IRNA. In the country's public TV channel PressTV, Qashqavi described the accusations against the diplomat as "invented."

In fact, Qashqavi said, the diplomat had been attacked by a woman of African origin. Instead of arresting the woman the police had turned on the diplomat, Qashqavi continued. He speculated that a conspiracy of an Iranian opposition group and the "Zionist" (Qashqavi) mass circulation paper Bild were behind the accusations in a campaign to damage Iran's image. Bild newspaper was the first to report the story.

There's been a similar case in April in Brazil where an Iranian diplomat was accused of molesting several children between the ages of nine and 15 years. The diplomat was sent back from Brazil to Iran in response to the allegations.

Diplomatic tensions

The case is not the first diplomatic spat between Berlin and Tehran. In 2005, a German citizen was arrested in Iran after fishing in the Strait of Hormuz and accidentally ending up in Iranian waters after his boat had suffered engine failure. An Iranian court sentenced him to 18 months in prison for illegal border violation. He was released only in 2007.

In 2010, two journalists from Germany's Bild newspaper were arrested in Iran over spying allegations. Both had entered the country with a normal tourist visa. They were released after 132 days in detention.

Author: Christoph Ricking / ai
Editor: Richard Connor