Internet Sex-Soliciting Case of UAE Diplomat Raises Diplomatic Immunity Concerns by Craig Mauro The members of the Blue Ridge Thunder Task Force thought they had their man. An investigator from the specialized police unit in Bedford County, Va., had successfully lured a man who went by the online login name ìtobannacoî to meet and have sex with a supposed 13-year-old girl he had been conversing with in a chat roomósometimes using language so explicit ìyou couldnít put it in your newspaper,î according to Bedford Sheriff Michael Brown. A policeman, posing as the young girl online, set a rendezvous with the suspected child molester for Feb. 23 at a shopping mall in Forest, Va., about 180 miles southwest of Washington. Nearly a monthís work of police work was to culminate that afternoon at a parking lot in the Graves Mill Shopping Center. When the sting was carried out, however, the suspect wasnít the only one thrown for a surprise. The Bedford County police had busted a diplomat, 40-year-old Salem al-Mazrooei, who until last month had overseen a scholarship program at the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates in Washington. Al-Mazrooei pleaded diplomatic immunity, and later that day the Bedford po lice had to let him go. ìThe night of the arrest we chatted with the State Department probably for a total of about three hours trying to determine whether he was a diplomat and did he in fact have diplomatic immunity,î Brown said. ìOnce it was determined that, yes, he did, then we had no recourse but to release him.î Since the arrest, Al-Mazrooei has been fired from his job and has left the United States with his family, according to the State Department. A spokesman from the United Arab Emirates Embassy said he had no information about the case. Brown, a retired federal agent who worked for the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said he has had experience with diplomatic immunity before and thus was not too ruffled by Al-Mazrooeiís release. But for the three members of the Blue Ridge Thunder Task Force and many residents of Bedford, the turn of events was frustrating. The federally funded task force, which tracks sexual predators lurking on the Internet, has a 100 percent conviction rate and is one of the oldest of its kind in the United States. ìThey spent a lot of time on the investigation,î Brown said. ìItís no question in my mind this individual had either violated before [or] he would have violated this time had the 13-year-old female who he thought he was meeting been a 13-year-old female. And he will, if given the opportunity, I think, violate in the future. They donít give it up.î The Al-Mazrooei case is the highest-profile example in this country of a diplomat using the immunity granted to him under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations to sidestep allegations of a serious crime since a Georgian diplomat ran over and killed a 16-year-old girl in Dupont Circle in 1997. Al-Mazrooei was charged in warrants with five counts of solicitation of a minor and one count of attempted indecent liberties. He would have faced up to 10 years in prison on each solicitation charge and a maximum of five on the indecent liberties charge. The notion of diplomatic immunity dates back to ancient times. Records from the Greek and Roman empires showed they had granted it to emissaries and envoys, and there is evidence the idea existed even in prehistoric tribes. Officials and scholars today say immunity is an essential part of international relations, allowing for diplomats to carry out their jobs effectively without impediment in a host nation. Governments can always waive the immunity of their diplomats. A host nation can request the government of the offending diplomat to waive his or her immunity. In the 1997 Dupont Circle case, Georgia ended up waiving Gueorgui Makharadzeís immunity. He was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and served a portion of his seven-to-21-year sentence in a U.S. prison before being sent back to Georgia, where he was released on parole in February 2002. State Department spokesman Lou Fintor said U.S. officials were planning to ask the United Arab Emirates to waive Al-Mazrooeiís immunity, but they were told the diplomat had already returned to his home country before they could formalize the request. ìThe issue became moot,î Fintor said. The State Department has started the process of entering Al-Mazrooeiís name and arrest warrant details into several databases run by national agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, Fintor said. ìGiven the severity of this case, we have requested the UAE investigate this matter with a view to prosecuting any offense under UAE law,î Fintor said, adding that U.S. officials would help UAE authorities meet that goal. Cases involving diplomatic immunity donít just raise hackles in this country. A U.S. marine was involved last year in a controversial case of diplomatic immunity in Romania. In December, the allegedly drunken Marine, a member of the security staff at the U.S. Embassy in Bucharest, crashed into a taxi and killed a passenger inside, 50-year-old Romanian rock star Teo Peter. The accident sparked public outrage in Romania, with protests taking place outside the U.S. Embassy. The countryís prime minister sent President Bush a letter reportedly urging him to ìget involvedî and waive the marineís immunity. The marine, identified in press reports as Staff Sgt. Christopher VanGoethem, returned to the United States shortly after the crash. The status of his immunity hinges on a pending investigation into the crash by the Navyís criminal investigation service. For police officers like Bedford County Sheriff Michael Brown, diplomatic immunity is a fact of life, though a difficult one to swallow. ìItís the law of the land, I understand it. It doesnít make you feel any better knowing that heís walked away,î Brown said about Al-Mazrooei, who ran a program overseeing UAE students studying in the United States on scholarships. ìI would be curious if the United Arab Emirates Embassy or their government would investigate to see if any of the students that he has had basically control over, if there have been any violations there. I would certainly encourage them to. ìTo be fair to the guy, maybe this is his first encounter,î Brown added. ìI doubt it. Knowing what we know about these types of perpetrators, I doubt if it is. I doubt if it will be his last. Over there, they may have a method with which they can monitor him. I have no idea what theyíll do. But they have all of the information.î Craig Mauro is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C.