What is the jurisdiction of the Khashoggi murder case? Today, I read that Turkish president Erdogan wants the Saudi hit squad that killed journalist Jamal Khashoggi to face justice in Turkey for their role in the murder. There seems little doubt that a murder occurred; there seems little doubt that the murder occurred inside the Saudi consulate in Turkey. If that is the case, then the murder occurred on Saudi soil, and thus the perpetrators should be facing Saudi justice - not Turkish. I'm not at all interested in the politics of the case, only the legal jurisdiction of a case like this. Since the case is ongoing and facts may change, for purposes of this question, assume that it is the case that a murder occurred in the Saudi consulate, and the perpetrators were Saudi nationals. Is it true that consuls are territories of the countries they represent, and not of the area they take up? Where do crimes get adjudicated in cases like this? Are there different protocols to handle certain kinds of crimes? Does it depend on a treaty between two countries, or is this standard international law?
According to Wikipedia's article Diplomatic Mission: Contrary to popular belief, most diplomatic missions do not enjoy full extraterritorial status and – in those cases – are not sovereign territory of the represented state. Rather, the premises of diplomatic missions usually remain under the jurisdiction of the host state while being afforded special privileges (such as immunity from most local laws) by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Diplomats themselves still retain full diplomatic immunity, and (as an adherent to the Vienna Convention) the host country may not enter the premises of the mission without permission of the represented country, even to put out a fire. (Supporting citations omitted) According to its article on Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations key provisions include: Article 22. The premises of a diplomatic mission, such as an embassy, are inviolable and must not be entered by the host country except by permission of the head of the mission. Furthermore, the host country must protect the mission from intrusion or damage. The host country must never search the premises, nor seize its documents or property. Article 29. Diplomats must not be liable to any form of arrest or detention. They are immune from civil or criminal prosecution, though the sending country may waive this right under Article 32. However, people who are not diplomats do not have automatic protection from arrest, and the idea that an embasy is the &quot;soil&quot; of the country it represents is largely obsolete. See This stack exchange politics question. So if Turkey were to obtain custody of people it accused of doing the killing, and if those people were not accredited diplomats, it could try them under Turkish law. Whether any of that is likely to happen is another question.
From Wikipedia: The court has jurisdiction over crimes only if they are committed in the territory of a state party or if they are committed by a national of a state party; an exception to this rule is that the ICC may also have jurisdiction over crimes if its jurisdiction is authorized by the United Nations Security Council. Perhaps it is a political move to force Russia to veto a resolution authorizing jurisdiction in the hope that most of the world would view as being tantamount to an admission of the impropriety of its invasion of Ukraine. In addition, Ukraine has granted the court &quot;ad hoc jurisdiction.&quot; See Ukraine fights Russia on the ground and in the courts: The court is limited to investigating the crime of aggression to members of the court. Russia is not a party to the Rome Statute, which created the court in 2002, while Ukraine has granted the court only ad hoc jurisdiction since 2014. On that basis, the court completed an initial investigation into Russia’s activities in Eastern Ukraine and its 2014 annexation of the Crimean peninsula, concluding six years later that there was “a reasonable basis at this time to believe that a broad range of conduct constituting war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
This is tied up in the concept of sovereignty - nation states have control over their territories and citizens and they recognise the right of other nation states to do likewise. The USA, China (Hong Kong) and Panama are all sovereign states, they each decide what the law is within their own territory and they can’t tell each other what to do; they can ask, however, that’s what diplomats do. If a HK domiciled company provides HK based servers then they have to comply with HK law irrespective of where their customers are located. The USA could pass a law requiring US companies (like ISPs) to keep logs of traffic to and from HK servers but they cannot force a HK company to do anything, unless and until it operates in a place where the US has jurisdiction which means both the right and the ability to enforce their law.
The US has jurisdiction because you committed a crime in the US. Canada has jurisdiction because you committed a crime in Canada. As added complications, if you are a Mexican citizen then Mexico has jurisdiction and if your victim is Chinese then China has jurisdiction. If you get arrested on an Interpol warrant in Spain then Spain has jurisdiction. And so on ... Your implicit assumption is that jurisdiction is exclusive, it isn't. Any country (or sub-national jurisdiction) that claims jurisdiction has jurisdiction, at least to the extent of testing that claim. Whether any given polity has jurisdiction depends on the particular law involved, some laws are only applicable within that countries borders others are extra-territorial, some are applicable to citizens but not non-citizens or vice-versa, etc.
Is it the case that Police in the US are unable to proceed with a charge if a victim declines to &quot;press charges&quot; and if so, how are murder charges or even more pertinently, domestic violence charges, brought to court? First of all, it is prosecutors and not police officers who actually bring criminal charges in the legal systems in the vast majority of U.S. states (although not quite all, minor offenses in Rhode Island, for example, are an exception). Second, a prosecutor does have the right to bring criminal charges even if the victim or someone affiliated with the victim does not &quot;press charges&quot;. Indeed, a prosecutor can almost always bring criminal charges over the objections of a victim, although &quot;victim's rights&quot; protections in some U.S. states require a prosecutor to confer with a victim before doing so. This said, law enforcement and a prosecutor cannot prosecute a criminal case if they have no knowledge that a crime was committed, so if no one brings a crime to the attention of authorities it is unlikely to be prosecuted. And, law enforcement and prosecutors will defer to the wishes of a victim that charges not be pressed in the legal system against an offender in many kinds of cases (although that discretion is limited in many states in domestic violence cases by statute).
That is not a valid assumption. Many states have laws that let you presume someone is a threat to your life if they forcibly enter your house. Simple trespass on your land does not let you reasonably presume someone is a murderer. An autonomous killer drone is not a comparison you want to make: those may be illegal entirely, and are likely to seriously hurt any claim of justifiable force. “You forfeit your right to live when you set foot on my property” is not justifiable. If the dogs are trained to be a hazard to the community, that’s an argument in favor of having them confiscated and destroyed. Dogs are not people. Under normal circumstances, they cannot be protected under self-defense or the defense of others. Those doctrines only apply when a person is in danger. Deadly force is sometimes allowed to protect property, but this tends to be strictly limited. To start with, you can only ever use force to prevent illegal damage to property. If your concern is “this animal control officer will destroy my dogs within the scope of their duty,” that’s not protecting against an illegal use of force. Deadly force in defense of property is also normally limited to particular crimes that are inherently dangerous, like arson, robbery, or burglary. Even in Texas, simple theft only justifies deadly force during the nighttime. Deadly force is also not justifiable if there were reasonable other options. Shooting an animal control officer is unlikely to be the only way to temporarily stop them from destroying a dog. Threatening violence in order to influence a judge’s decision is terrorism. This hypothetical man is a terrorist. He may well find himself on death row for murder, but he’s also going to face separate charges for terrorism.
Any country is free to decide what actions are considered to be crimes, and what crimes are prosecuted depending on whether you perform the action in the country, outside the country, and depending on whether you are a citizen, a resident, both, or neither. They can also decide what are accepted defences in court and which are not. Any other country is free to decide under which circumstances they will ever extradite someone to that first country. Now you have to check the laws of the individual countries.
The Proper Defendant As a preliminary matter, it would be necessary to determine who the proper defendant was in the case, in order to analyze it further. The World Health Organization (WHO) is probably a different legal entity from the United Nations (UN) itself and merely affiliated with the UN from a legal perspective, rather than being legally considered to be an agency of the UN. So, the WHO rather than the UN would be the proper defendant. Subject Matter Jurisdiction Federal courts have limited "subject matter" jurisdiction and this must always be analyzed before other jurisdictional considerations are considered. But, U.S. District Courts are allowed to adjudicate civil lawsuits where the amount in controversy exceeds $75,000 and the defendants are not citizens of the same U.S. state. This is a civil lawsuit, the amount in controversy exceeds $75,000, the plaintiffs are citizens of New York State, and the Defendant is not a New York State entity. So, the federal court has subject matter jurisdiction over the case. Venue Venue is proper in a federal district court if the district court can assert personal jurisdiction over the defendant. A district court, in turn, has personal jurisdiction over any defendant over whom a state court of general jurisdiction in the state where the district court is located would have personal jurisdiction. Note, as an aside, that where none of the events giving rise to the suit took place in the state, and the defendant does not reside in the state, any of the U.S. District Courts in the state is a proper venue, whether or not the Plaintiffs reside there, if the general jurisdiction state courts of the state would have personal jurisdiction over the Defendant. Personal Jurisdiction General Jurisdiction It appears that the WHO does not have a permanent office for the conduct of business in the United States (it's headquarters is in Switzerland and none of its regional offices are in the U.S.), although it might have a full time representative at the UN offices in New York City. Therefore, a federal district court in New York State (or a state court in New York State) would probably not have the authority to assert "general personal jurisdiction" (i.e. jurisdiction over any case against the defendant without regard to how it arose) over the WHO because this is not a "headquarters" or equivalent permanent office in New York State. Specific Jurisdiction To have "specific personal jurisdiction" over over the WHO (i.e. arising from the facts of the particular case and limited to that case), the WHO would have to have taken actions directed as someone within the state in which the District Court in question is located which would suffice to personally avail itself of the laws of that state and the United States. Failure to adequately take actions in China for the general benefit of the world, would not suffice to meet that standard. While the injury may have occurred in New York State, the actions alleged did not occur in New York State and were not directed in any particular way to New York State as opposed to anywhere else, and no one is alleging that the WHO intentionally or negligently itself sent coronavirus germs to New York State, even if it may have failed to take certain steps that it had a duty to take, and that failure made the arrival of those germs in New York State possible. Tag Jurisdiction A third way to acquire personal jurisdiction in some cases is called "tag jurisdiction." "Tag jurisdiction" provides a court with personal jurisdiction over an individual in a particular case in the state where personal service of process upon that individual took place, without regard to other considerations. But, "tag jurisdiction" does not apply to entities such as the WHO. Governmental Immunity Moreover, even if a U.S. District Court did have personal jurisdiction over the WHO, this action would be a "tort" action and the WHO would also almost certainly have some form of sovereign immunity under U.S. law from a tort action of this type. The relevant U.S. statute is the International Organizations Immunities Act (full text here). The key provision for purposes of this question is 22 U.S.C. §288a(b) which states: International organizations, their property and their assets, wherever located, and by whomsoever held, shall enjoy the same immunity from suit and every form of judicial process as is enjoyed by foreign governments, except to the extent that such organizations may expressly waive their immunity for the purpose of any proceedings or by the terms of any contract. The definition of an International Organization for the purposes of the act is 22 U.S.C. § 288 which provides a general rule protecting international organizations in the absence of an executive order to the contrary. The President may revoke an international organization's immunity prospectively by executive order (except in the case of 13 organizations who are covered by a specific statutory provision; the WHO is not one of them), but neither a private organization nor a U.S. state or local government, may do so. And, an executive order purporting to revoke an organization's immunity retroactively would be void as an ex post facto determination. Conclusion In summary, then, this lawsuit will very likely be dismissed either for lack of personal jurisdiction, or on account of an immunity from tort liability doctrine, in response to a motion to dismiss, without ever getting any further. It might also be dismissed for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted on other grounds (e.g. the lack of a legal duty or the lack of plausible allegations sufficient to support the claim that the WHO's actions or inactions were a legal cause of the harm suffered). Footnote Re Legal Basis For The Claim On The Merits It is unclear which statute is violated. It would be unusual for a claim for personal injury to arise under a statute. Most claims for personal injury are brought on the basis of a common law claim of negligence which would arise from the case law of New York State's state courts in this case (pursuant to the Erie doctrine). A negligence claim has four canonical elements: The existence of a legal duty (normally the legal duty to use reasonable care to refrain from causing injury to others) of the defendant that runs to the plaintiffs. Breach of the legal duty by the defendant. The causation of the damages alleged by the breach of the legal duty by the defendant in a foreseeable manner. Actual damage to the plaintiffs.