US Secretary of State John Kerry called a top Indian official to express regret about the case of an Indian diplomat strip-searched after her arrest in New York last week on charges including visa fraud, the State Department said on Wednesday (December 18).
Kerry’s call to Indian National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon, disclosed by the US State Department, aimed to defuse a diplomatic crisis sparked by the December 12 arrest of Devyani Khobragade on charges of visa fraud and underpaying her nanny, an Indian national.
India has been furious in its response to what it considers the degrading treatment of a senior diplomat by the United States, a country it sees as a close friend, and retaliated on Tuesday 17) by removing security barriers at the US Embassy in New Delhi. The barriers would offer some protection against a suicide-bomb attack.
“As a father of two daughters about the same age as Devyani Khobragade, the secretary empathizes with the sensitivities we are hearing from India about the events that unfolded after Ms Khobragade’s arrest,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said in a written statement.
“In his conversation with National Security Advisor Menon, (Secretary Kerry) expressed his regret, as well as his concern that we not allow this unfortunate public issue to hurt our close and vital relationship with India,” Harf added.
An expression of regret, in the world of diplomacy, is generally viewed as something short of an outright apology. Harf said Kerry had used the word “regret” in his conversation with Menon, but she declined to elaborate on whether this constituted an apology or to offer greater detail on their discussion.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said the administration is looking into the arrest “to ensure that all standard procedures were followed and that every opportunity for courtesy was extended.”
The White House has told Indian officials it expects New Delhi will “fulfil” all its obligations” for the safety and security of US diplomats in India, Carney said.
The US Justice Department confirmed that Khobragade was strip-searched. A senior Indian government source has also said the interrogation included a cavity search.
A spokeswoman for the US Marshals Service, Nikki Credic-Barrett, said Khobragade did not undergo a cavity search but did go through a strip search. Under the agency’s regulations governing prisoner searches, a strip search can include a “visual inspection” of body cavities, including the nose, mouth, genitals and anus, without intrusion.
Khobragade told colleagues in an email of “repeated handcuffing, stripping and cavity searches, swabbing” and being detained in a holding cell with petty criminals, despite her “incessant assertions of immunity.”
According to Credic-Barrett, anyone brought to the holding cells inside the New York federal courthouse, where Khobragade made her initial appearance after her arrest, is automatically subjected to a strip search if he or she is placed among other prisoners. The blanket policy is for the safety of prisoners and marshals, she said.
While common in the United States, jail strip searches have prompted legal challenges from civil liberties groups concerned that the practice is degrading and unnecessary.
Ezekiel Edwards, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said that despite a Supreme Court ruling last year upholding strip searches even in the absence of any suspicion the individual has contraband or weapons, law enforcement authorities should make an effort to distinguish between prisoners who merit invasive searches and those who pose no risk.
"Saying that it’s not unusual is not to say that it should be acceptable,” he said.
India has appointed Khobragade to its permanent mission at the United Nations and her attorney Daniel Arshack said that, in her new role, she would have diplomatic immunity from prosecution retroactively.
However, the State Department would have to sign off on a request to move her from the consulate to the UN mission, and no such request has been received, Harf told reporters. She said the US government notified India of the allegations against Khobragade in September.
