The United States federal officials demonstrate their lack of respect for the rest of the world:
India Is Furious Over US Strip Search Of Diplomat Facing Fraud Charges
The “fraud charges” consist of this:
US authorities say she not only paid a domestic servant a fraction of the minimum wage but also lied in a visa application for the employee, an Indian national who has since absconded.
@Petros
The USA is in VERY hot water now….It seems quite possibly there may be tit for tat. Perhaps India may be more receptive to FATCA rejection. Have they signed the IGA ? I hope one of the reprisals will be a No to FATCA
It’s one matter if the US is being disrespectful, it’s quite another for countries not to allow themselves to be bullied into US compliance. For example with FATCA it’s up to the citizens of each country (or European Courts) to see relief through their own legal system if their governments won’t help. At least it would force a debate in various Parliaments with the view to at least limit the scope of FATCA, and force Parliaments to change laws to legally discriminate against people.
I am really starting to be alarmed at the run away train that is happening in the U.S. with regard to the way individuals are being treated. freedoms eroded, privacy gone, no other nation respected whatsoever. It’s horrid what happened to this woman. In fact, I’d call it an assault if it happened to me. Sorry but, that’s what it is if anyone else behaves in this manner and the excuse given for it is really getting into crazyland.
Sometimes, I worry about my family living in the U.S. when I read things like this. Government is out of control there. Individuals have a smaller and smaller voice.
I wonder if ANYONE objected to following through with this type of treatment who was working there at the time? No one had a voice of reason? No one spoke up? What the hell is going on down there?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/arrest-of-indian-diplomat-in-new-york-sparks-us-india-tensions/2013/12/17/09d1d81e-6714-11e3-997b-9213b17dac97_story.html?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=%2AMorning%20Brief&utm_campaign=MB%2012.18.13
The Marshals Service said in a statement Tuesday that “standard arrestee intake procedures” were followed. In response to specific news media queries about whether a strip search had been conducted, the service said, “Yes, Devyani Khobragade was subject to the same search procedures as other USMS arrestees held within the general prisoner population in the Southern District of New York.” It said she had been placed in an “available and appropriate cell.”
@all
Per the WP article
“Indian officials have alleged that the 39-year-old diplomat was strip-searched, cavity-searched and swabbed for DNA after her arrest in New York on fraud charges Thursday, then confined with hardened drug criminals until her release the same day on $250,000 bail. India’s national security adviser called the treatment “despicable and barbaric.””
She was released the same day!!!
There is the issue of her lying on the visa and making the maid sleep in a closet . depends on the closet…sometimes some closets are made into little rooms.I have had some like that..They call them dens up here. .Promising to pay her more on her contract!
I know waiters and waitresses in Florida are paid $2.00 an hour or less…they depend on tips which in little breakfast and hamburger joints don’t bring in big tippers. I made 50 cent an hour in Florida as a server in 1968. Of course no benefits then and now and you work when they give you work. could be zero hours a week.
I think the strip search and putting in a cell was very harsh. Look at cocaine addict Florida House Rep . he did not get strip searched nor spent time in jail.
It seems the law in the USA is very subjective and harsh or lenient when handed out. Lady Liberty is looking very tattered and her blindfold is off.
@Atticus, the Pennsylvania police detained a couple on $500,000 and 250,000 bail for over a month. The cocaine in their possession turned out to be soap. The Pennsylvania police has a very bad reputation. I would avoid driving through that state. Remember Robert Leone.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/17/us-usa-india-diplomat-idUSBRE9BG0NC20131217
Lots of retaliation, including removing security barriers and refusing to meet with a Congressional delegation.
They have a point about law of their land…
In the meantime, U.S. wants cross-border officers exempt from Canadian law
AND,
How will US FATCA foreign law come into Canada — by signing an IGA and waiving Canadian law of the land (and similar to other countries’ own legislation), the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, creating second-class Canadians by virtue of their US-ness?
Says nothing of the fact that a big part of the US economy is made up of illegals.
They targeted her then interrogated her nanny. Why else would claiming she’s paying the nanny minimum wage flag her?
@bubblebustin, where did you read that they interrogated the nanny? This is very strange. It must be the result of some kind of sting operation, and they have indeed targeted the nanny to get to her boss. The question is why an Indian diplomat would even be a target of an Obama sting operation, unless some form of retaliation against India is in mind.
I speculated on a line from the article that Mark Twain posted:
“The diplomat had privately agreed with the domestic worker that she would receive just over a third of that rate, the public attorney said.”
How would they be privy to a private conversation between the diplomat and her nanny, unless either of them admitted it, or the room where the spoke was bugged?
@Bubblebustin. That’s interesting. The US should now have to prove that they didn’t use NSA data in order to ascertain that the diplomat’s domestic help was under paid. The question is therefore: How and why did they know about a private arrangement between an Indian diplomat and her nanny?
Obviously, they could know this through their spying on the Indian embassy. They should be forced to prove that they did not obtain this through NSA spying, such as obtaining illegally their emails.
Is the US not using the information that they obtain for law enforcement purposes, and not simply to prevent terrorism?
Sorry for this thread hijack but I have a comment about a Bloomberg article from yesterday. Perhaps this might be worth a separate thread? http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-17/accidental-tax-break-saves-wealthiest-americans-100-billion.html
The article describes how Congress created a complex law targeting a certain class of the population to make them pay more tax. However, the rich folks who were targeted simply hired expensive lawyers to get around the law. Realizing that the same rich folks take frequent advantage of their 1st Amendment-mandated right to bribe Congress as they see fit, Congress refuses to modify the law.
Anyone see the same future for FATCA? The rich tax dodgers will find myriad ways to escape FATCA while of course all the massive negative effects of FATCA for the little guy will remain in place (not to mention the billions that non-US financial institutions must spend to implement this lunacy as well as the loss of respect that goes with shoving a law down the throat of every other country in the world with an obviously false promise of reciprocity).
I’m puzzled, are writing an inaccurate visa application and paying an employee less than a standard salary arrestable offenses? Perhaps they are, but my sense is that such situations allow, even invite, more flexible interpretations of the law, which would seem especially natural in the case of a foreign diplomat. There are ways to address such issues without resorting to the nuclear option first. Unfortunately, law enforcement in the U.S. is indeed out of control, with the routine shooting of suspects, the over-use of other violent methods, and an often absolute, inflexible implementation of laws, in ways that undermine their spirit.
@Petros
The NSA has changed the definition of “private”!
@Michael Young
Yes, there were options. It will be interesting to learn about the circumstances leading up to the arrest, as Petros suggests. Someone wanted this to happen.
@M Young: A comment at the American Thinker sums up:
Thanks Petros for posting this. I was strongly thinking of doing something on this myself until my heat went out last night and I got tied up. Lucky for me you beat me too it. This story is outrageous and shows the way American law enforcement increasingly works.
The US just completed the task of infuriating all four BRICs. There’s no way any of them is going to sign an IGA now.
Gary Weiss of Ayn Rand Nation had a good blog post on this:
http://garyweiss.blogspot.com/2013/12/could-arrest-of-indian-diplomat-sink.html
For years, complaints have swirled around the most visible–and inexplicable–outcome of the 2008 financial crisis: Not a single financial executive has been prosecuted for doing engaging in any criminal activity. And no, I don’t mean insider trading, a favorite of Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. I mean the kind of stuff that almost sank the banking system.
PBS’s Frontline, in a memorable special report, called them “The Untouchables.”
Five years after the crisis, prosecutors here are supposedly “exploring new strategies for criminally charging Wall Street bankers who packaged and sold the bad mortgage loans behind the financial crisis,” according to Reuters, but time is not on their side. The trail is going cold, and statute of limitation issues are going to start kicking in.
Bharara has famously focused on other kinds of wrongdoing–drug gangs in the Bronx, insider trading rings, and other wrongdoing NOT involving large, politically connected Wall Street banks. Most recently, his office arrested Devyani Khobragade, deputy consul general for India based in New York, for allegedly submitting false documents to obtain a work visa for her housekeeper and paying the woman less than the minimum legal wage. She faces ten years in prison on one charge and five on another.
It seemed at first as yet another day at the office for Bharara, who I profiled for the Daily Beast in 2011. Another heavy-handed prosecution of a fairly routine immigration-law violation, aimed at deterring other transgressors, and also showing the public that the man is not entirely an empty suit. I mean, he is actually doing something. He may not be prosecuting people involved in the financial crisis, but at least he can nab people for visa transgressions.
I wonder if Bharara knew that he’d be touching off the worst diplomatic crisis between the U.S. and India–a crucial U.S. ally, for heaven’s sake–in recent memory.
The Indians have gone ballistic. There was outrage that not only was Khobragade arrested, but strip-searched and tossed in the clink with dope addicts before forking over a steep $250,000 bail. The New York Times reported today that the U.S. ambassador was summoned for a strongly worded protest, and people in Delhi were furious. Indian authorities even removed the vehicle barriers that prevent car-bombers from driving into the U.S. Embassy grounds.
The Indian national security adviser, Shivshankar Menon, used words like “despicable” and “barbaric,” and the Indian government retaliated in a way that harkened back to the Cold War, when India and the U.S. were barely on speaking terms:
Preet Bharara is himself born in India. I wonder if he holds a family vendetta against the Khobragade. Little import. I am not sure however to what degree the prosecutor is involved in the actual criminal investigation. They would advise regarding the desire to prosecute, but would the prosecutor lead the sting operation and therefore be involved in arresting and strip searching the diplomat. It is more than we can know at this point. I’d like access to Weiss’s sources.
PS. Jim Cramer on CNBC is a HUGE HUGE fan of Preet Bharara. Cramer was also a former college classmate and friend of disgraced former New York Governor Elliot Spitzer.
I also heard someplace that Diane Francis has said some very positive things about Preet Bharara too. Francis made some comments about how “tough” US prosecutors like Bharara make American “rich” people sweat while the RCMP and OPP don’t lay kid gloves on anyone with money,
Here is another article about Preet Bharara: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/us-attorney-preet-bharara-devyani-khobragade-new-york-barack-obama-india/1/331702.html
Here is an interesting suggestion:
Is Bharara using his position to retaliate against the current government of India?
On the Media has been doing coverage on Border Security and DHS. Worth a listen and a way to crowd source..
MY DETAINMENT STORY OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP FEELING SAFE IN MY OWN COUNTRY AND HATE BORDER AGENTS*
This lead them to create a tool to try to get answers from DHS
http://www.onthemedia.org/story/listeners-trying-shed-light-dhs/
Bharara sounds like law enforcement’s version of Rob Ford.