[fair_enough]

I still cannot believe the Geneva Conventions allowed this. This should have ended with John Kerry and Jen Psaki in a Swiss prison for at least 10 years, if not Barack Obama himself. We managed to convict accused war criminals with a lot less evidence in the Nuremburg trials. FOR EMPHASIS: I'm not comparing the severity of the crimes, I'm comparing the evidentiary basis for securing convictions.

"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." -Henry Kissinger

[ben_w]

  The Geneva Conventions are international humanitarian laws consisting of four treaties and three additional protocols that establish international legal standards for humanitarian treatment in war.

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions

What would those have to do with "intelligence contractor leaked our stuff, might be on the Bolivian president's plane, oh no a diplomatic incident"?

[fair_enough]

All you did was link to the main page of a wikipedia article and copy and paste the first sentence. Your response is so lazy, it doesn't even deserve a response, but I'm putting this out here for the benefit of the general public:

https://www.icrc.org/en/article/grave-breaches-defined-genev... GC 4 Art. 147. "Grave breaches to which the preceding Article relates shall be those involving any of the following acts, if committed against persons or property protected by the present Convention: wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, UNLAWFUL DEPORTATION OR TRANSFER OR CONFINEMENT OF A PROTECTED PERSON, compelling a protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile Power, or wilfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in the present Convention, taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly."

1. Foreign heads of state are definitely protected persons.

2. Foreign heads of state transiting to and from diplomatic meetings are engaged in a protected activity.

3. If these laws apply between enemy nations engaged in declared war, they are even more applicable to countries at peace with one another.

It turns out I'm even more right that I initially thought: this was not only a breach of the spirit of the Geneva Conventions, it was also a breach of the very letter of the law! Regardless, someone doesn't understand the purpose of the Geneva Conventions in the first place, so I'll elaborate...

Edward Snowden himself is irrelevant, it doesn't matter if Osama Bin Laden was on that plane. The fact is that the US and its allies used deception to illegally ground a diplomatic flight, detain a foreign head of state, and engage in an illegal search and seizure.

Furthermore, whether or not the countries involved were even at war is irrelevant. The purpose of the Geneva Conventions are to maintain a minimum set of international ethics that make diplomacy safe for diplomats. If a foreign head of state can be detained or imprisoned, and if his property can be searched or seized, then diplomatic negotiations for anything are now impossible.

It doesn't matter if the reasons for breaking these rules are justifiable or not, the fact is that you're not trustworthy even in a basic capacity that allows for diplomatic negotiation. You're in the same perfidious bucket as Japanese Emperor Hirohito, Saddam Hussein, or Ruhollah Khomeini (Iranian Hostage Crisis).

"Build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across."

-Sun Tzu

P.S. The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations explicitly forbids detaining diplomats. See articles 27 and 29:

https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventio...

YOU LOSE! YOU GET NOTHING! GOOD DAY, SIR!

[ben_w]

> If these laws apply between enemy nations engaged in declared war, they are even more applicable to countries at peace with one another.

So far as I can tell, that claim is your own invention.

Also, according to your own link's link to the full text:

  Article 4 - Definition of protected persons

  Persons protected by the Convention are those who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever, find themselves, in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals.

  Nationals of a State which is not bound by the Convention are not protected by it. Nationals of a neutral State who find themselves in the territory of a belligerent State, and nationals of a co-belligerent State, shall not be regarded as protected persons while the State of which they are nationals has normal diplomatic representation in the State in whose hands they are.

  The provisions of Part II are, however, wider in application, as defined in Article 13 .

  Persons protected by the Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field of August 12, 1949, or by the Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded, Sick and Shipwrecked Members of Armed Forces at Sea of August 12, 1949, or by the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War of August 12, 1949, shall not be considered as protected persons within the meaning of the present Convention.

-- https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gciv-1949/art...

So, not what you say.

Even if it was, Morales was not detained by another state, nor did his plane land under what is recognised as "coercion": The aircraft was denied overflight by several European states after rumours that Snowden was aboard, so it diverted to Austria, where it landed voluntarily for refuelling. Austria’s authorities requested (but, in a legal sense, did not compel) inspection; Morales, in a legal sense, consented.

Also, "search and seizure"? Nothing was seized, IIRC?

> The purpose of the Geneva Conventions are to maintain a minimum set of international ethics that make diplomacy safe for diplomats.

Nope, different laws for that. As you say elsewhere, Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Which, importantly, is a different thing than the Geneva Conventions. I mean, you can tell by how most of the words in the name are different…

> YOU LOSE! YOU GET NOTHING! GOOD DAY, SIR!

I see you're new here. Such energy doesn't go down well on this site.