Wayne Madsen
Dec. 27, 2013
In less than a month, Indian Deputy Consul in New York and members of
the Russian Permanent Mission to the United Nations came under judicial
harassment by U.S. federal law enforcement in contravention of
well-established and recognized diplomatic conventions, norms, and
practices.
On December 12, Devyani Khobragade, the deputy Indian consul general
and advisor to the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nation, was
arrested by law enforcement officials in New York. The arrest was in
violation of the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the
United Nations. Khobragade was criminally charged by the chief federal
prosecutor in New York with committing U.S. visa fraud to hire an
underpaid domestic servant. The 39-year old Indian diplomat was stripped
naked, subjected to an invasive body cavity search, and jailed before
posting bail.
On December 5, the same federal prosecutor charged 49 Russian diplomats
assigned to the Russian Mission to the United Nations, the Russian
Consulate General in New York, and the Russian Trade Mission with
committing Medicare fraud over a ten-year period. In the case of the
Russian diplomats, the prosecutor recognized the defendants’ diplomatic
immunity. However, in the case of Ms. Khobragade, diplomatic immunity
was ignored.
The common denominator in both U.S. government assaults on diplomatic
immunity in New York is the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of
Manhattan Preet Bharara, a native of Firozpur, Punjab, India and a
naturalized U.S. citizen. A possible explanation for Bharara’s rough
arrest of Khobragade in comparison to his decision not to arrest the
Russian diplomats lies in India’s arcane caste system.
Bharara, the son of a Sikh father and Hindu mother, is a member of
India’s upper caste. Khobragade, on the other hand, is a dalit, a member
of India’s so-called “untouchable” or lower class. The fact that
Bharara, a Columbia University law school graduate, a Democrat, and a
Barack Obama loyalist, would permit Indian caste politics to creep into
his decision-making processes, has many legal experts in New York and
around the country alarmed. Even as Secretary of State John Kerry tried
to assuage India’s outrage over America’s treatment of its diplomat,
Bharara stood his ground in defending the treatment of Khobragade, even
as Kerry was officially passing his “regrets” to senior Indian
officials.
Bharara’s outrageous treatment of Khobragade may also have its roots in
the treatment Indian males generally afford females. Recent stories of
misogyny and the routine rape that Indian women are subjected to in a
largely male-dominant society were eclipsed in the media by Bharara’s
charge that the diplomat exploited her maid by paying her a sub-standard
wage and lied on visa papers to bring her into the United States.
The Russian diplomats were charged by Bharara with underreporting their
income in order to qualify for Medicare subsidies for health care. A
number of UN diplomats in New York, a high cost-of-living area, have
received Medicare subsidies to offset their relatively low income.
In neither case, that of the Russian diplomats or Khobragade, were the
foreign governments notified in advance of the actions to be taken by
the federal prosecutor. Bharara apparently acted, at least in the case
of Khobragade, without the knowledge of Kerry. That, itself, is a gross
breach of the authority of the State Department as the chief
interlocutor between the U.S. government and governments abroad.
It is a simple matter for the record that a number of naturalized U.S.
citizens who have become senior Justice Department officials have shown
utter contempt for the U.S. Constitution and long-established American
legal practices. In this regard, Bharara is joined in his misconduct by
former Justice Department officials Viet Dinh, a native of Vietnam and
one of the primary authors of the draconian USA Patriot Act; John Yoo, a
native of South Korea and an architect of America’s secret kidnapping
and torture program; and extreme right-winger Miguel Estrada, a native
of Honduras whose nomination for the U.S. Supreme Court was blocked by
the U.S. Senate because of his extremist views.
There is another factor behind Khobragade’s arrest. The maid who
accused the diplomat of grossly underpaying her is Sangeeta Richard,
whose father is an employee of the U.S. embassy in Delhi. Ms. Richard’s
mother reportedly worked for a senior U.S. diplomat in Delhi (some
Indians claim the diplomat was actually with the CIA). Furthermore, Ms.
Richard’s husband, Philip Richard, was an official driver for the
Mozambican embassy in Delhi. Yet, with all of these diplomatic and
intelligence contacts, we were told by Bharara that Sangeeta Richard was
some sort of abused and powerless domestic servant being paid much less
than a living wage.
Moreover, on December 10, two days before Khobragade’s arrest, someone
in the U.S. State Department arranged for Philip Richard and the
couple’s two children to fly on Air India to the United States and be
granted T-visas, a normally tough visa to procure and reserved for those
who are going to testify in the United States about criminal activities
abroad. The Indian government and media now suspect that Sangeeta
Richard was a “dangle” used to exfiltrate a CIA family out of India.
Khobragade’s arrest two days after the Richard family was spirited out
of India has many Indians and Americans convinced that Bharara was
acting on behalf of the CIA and that the professed ignorance of Kerry in
the matter was a result of a highly-compartmented intelligence
operation.
In 2004, Army Major Rabinder Singh, a senior official of India’s
foreign intelligence Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and a CIA agent,
was exfiltrated out of India via Kathmandu, Nepal. Burned by the fact
that the exfiltration, which was facilitated by the CIA station chief in
Kathmandu, became public, the CIA may have engineered the exfiltration
of the Richard family by concocting a visa fraud story against
Khobragade. Bharara, the Indian-American, was the perfect choice to
handle the India caper on behalf of CIA headquarters in Langley.
India’s response to Khobragade’s arrest by canceling special identity
cards and duty free shopping privileges for U.S. consular officials in
India appeared to be a measured retaliation often employed in espionage
scandals. Among the U.S. consular officials to lose their special
privileges were those at the U.S. Consulate General in Chennai, from
where the CIA once staged another recruitment of a senior RAW official.
There is also an element of racism at play in the humiliating arrest of
Khobragade. Abuse of Indian officials and diplomats is nothing new in
post-constitutional America. Former Indian President Abdul Kalam was
frisked twice by U.S. authorities, in 2011 on board an Air India plane
at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport and in 2009 before he boarded a
Continental Airlines flight from Delhi to the United States. Indian
protests were largely ignored by Washington.
In December 2010, Indian ambassador to the U.S. Meera Shanka was
frisked by a U.S. security screener in Mississippi who did not
understand the meaning of diplomatic status. Former Indian Defense
Minister George Fernandes was strip searched at Washington Dulles
Airport in 2003.
Similar stories can be told by other “non-white” diplomats and
officials who have visited the United States. In 2006, Venezuela’s
President Nicolas Maduro, who was foreign minister at the time, was
verbally abused and strip-searched by officials at John F. Kennedy
airport. Maduro was returning home after attending the annual UN General
Assembly plenary session.
Barack Obama has done nothing to change America’s bellicosity toward
diplomats, especially those of color. Obama is merely a congenial face
of color that hides America’s true nature: a nation that condones racism
along with an ever-looming threat of a jackboot and strip-search…
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