The Canberra Times reported late last night that Saudi Arabian diplomats have been ripping it up on Canberra‘s roads – speeding past Parliament House at 135km/h, getting into cop chases, driving drunk and just generally being incredibly loose behind the wheel.
Turns out diplomatic immunity is a fairly freeing concept if you’re keen to sink piss with the boys, do doughies and test the structural limits of the nation’s capital’s road infrastructure.
Cops can’t do a whole lot about it – this sort of stuff is generally dealt with by officials at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, who reprimand the respective diplomats and presumably allow them to dole out the lectures. DFAT’s chief of protocol was particularly miffed:
“I will be calling in the Saudi ambassador – most likely early next week – to express strong concern about this offence as well as another serious offence committed by a Saudi diplomat a week or so ago,” he told the Canberra Times.
It’s not just the Saudis who have been named and shamed: a Mexican Embassy staffer who refused a police breath test. The cops were powerless to compel him to do so.
Yikes. The Bad Boys of Diplomacy are at it again.
Source: Canberra Times.
Image: The Fast & The Furious.
