ABSTRACT
The diplomat serving in a foreign state128 represents the sending state and has thus often been vulnerable to attacks by those in dispute with the sending state. The increase in terrorist attacks in the 1960s and early 1970s prompted the General Assembly to adopt the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Internationally Protected Persons including Diplomatic Agents.129 In broad terms, the Convention provides that in respect of the ‘murder. kidnapping or other attack upon the person or liberty of an internationally protected person’,130 a state party shall either prosecute131 or extradite; Art 3 of the Convention provides that state parties shall establish jurisdiction over such offences. Such offences shall be included in any future extradition treaty between state parties.132 The Convention further provides that state parties shall cooperate in the supply of evidence133 and an arbitration procedure exists in the event of dispute.134 In the absence of an extradition treaty the Convention may act as a legal basis to extradite.135 The Convention was given effect to in the United Kingdom in the Internationally Protected Persons Act 1978 which creates a criminal offence in respect of attacks or threats of attack on a protected person;136 further it makes such acts extraditable offences for the purpose of extradition law.137
