The 17-year-old twin sons of Saad Mohammed Ridha Ali, Iraq’s ambassador to Portugal, briefly were in police custody yesterday after attacking a 15-year-old Portuguese boy in Ponte de Sor, in the Alentejo.
The victim, Rúben Cavaco, has been placed in an induced coma in Lisbon’s Santa Maria hospital and is in a “grave condition” with serious head injuries. He later underwent surgery to start to reconstruct his face which had suffered multiple fractures.
Two aggressors are under suspicion but both come under the rules of international diplomatic immunity* as they are sons of the Iraqi Ambassador to Portugal on a pilots course at the G Air Training Centre.
The hospital has declined to give details but witnesses said the boy was unrecognisable after being run over by a Mercedes with distinctive number plates (077 CD004) and then kicked and beaten.
Rúben Cavaco is a local boy, known for being “calm and tranquil” and it is not know what caused the attack which began at a night-club and ended in extreme violence in the centre of Ponte de Sor at around 04:00hrs.
It was because of the car’s diplomatic plates that witnesses easily were able to report the vehicle to police. One of the twin brothers ran Rúben over and the other beat him up, punching and kicking him as he lay on the ground.
A friend of the injured boy has told the paper: “We only knew it was Rúben from the watch and his trainers. It was just a pool of blood.”
The Iraqi embassy has not issued a statement and the boys today were released by police without charges being brought once their passports were verified and immunity confirmed.
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* Diplomatic immunity is a form of legal immunity that ensures diplomats are given safe passage and are considered not susceptible to lawsuit or prosecution under the host country's laws, although they can still be expelled. Modern diplomatic immunity was codified as international law in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961) which has been ratified by all but a handful of nations, though the concept and custom of such immunity have a much longer history dating back thousands of years.
Many principles of diplomatic immunity are now considered to be customary law. Diplomatic immunity as an institution developed to allow for the maintenance of government relations, including during periods of difficulties and armed conflict. When receiving diplomats, who formally represent the sovereign, the receiving head of state grants certain privileges and immunities to ensure they may effectively carry out their duties, on the understanding that these are provided on a reciprocal basis.
Originally, these privileges and immunities were granted on a bilateral, ad hoc basis, which led to misunderstandings and conflict, pressure on weaker states, and an inability for other states to judge which party was at fault. An international agreement known as the Vienna Conventions codified the rules and agreements, providing standards and privileges to all states.
