German man living at Delhi airport since March 18
hindustantimes.com
hindustantimes.com
This sounds highly suspicious to me. If he is a wanted criminal, I would imagine the German government is especially keen to take him home so that he can be held responsible for his crimes. It sounds to me like he doesn't want to leave for Germany and they can't make him board a "rescue flight".
At this point, the guy is probably best off just waiting it out in the transit area, and getting a flight out to Turkey or wherever when they resume.
Only explanation is he didn't want to take the flight.
> Chris Linford, 56, a cafe owner from Derbyshire, said he and his family were among a group of about 40 British tourists on a German flight from Delhi to Frankfurt on Friday [27th March]
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/31/germany-charte...
It’s sounded like he wanted to go to another country but couldn’t due to the lack of international flights.
The EU also pooled their repatriation flights. He could have gotten on any French, Italian, Spanish etc. transport, space permitting.
There's obviously something wrong with this guy. And if there wasn't before, six weeks at an airport made it happen. He should just go home and for it to be credited as time served.
Maybe...but the article suggests that his destination was Turkey. And if he is really wanted in Germany I don't he'd want to board a flight to France, Spain or anywhere else in the EU.
As such an airline won't take the passenger
https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/thailand/entry-requ...
So India and Germany have no extradition agreement? If so, probably the reason why this guy is in India.
Heathrow (for example)[0] has a problem with homeless people sleeping there, if they're warned by security staff and found again then they're considered trespassers, and trespass is illegal.
I imagine Indian authorities would have to cooperate with the German embassy once a flight that is to their satisfaction is available to put him on the flight.
Can they really compel him to board a flight to Germany against his will? I mean technically he's still in-transit and not actually under Indian jurisdiction...
Speaking in general terms, based on various other countries limiting or restricting their international transit areas, I believe that in-transit areas (or pre-immigration areas in US airports) are usually not actually outside jurisdiction but are permitted by the host country to be accessible to passengers without immigration/customs processing. Therefore, they're not like international waters or airspace.
https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/18561/what-is-the...
I don't know if Germany/India has one. I would expect it though, most countries figure if you are a criminal you are more likely to commit another crime so better let someone else deal with you before then. Thus such treaties are pretty universal.
There are confounding situations here though. Most countries won't make an international incident over what they consider a minor crime: if Germany hasn't asked India, India is stuck unable to arrest someone they might not want to. Also both countries have to agree on the crimes, if India doesn't consider what he is accused of immoral (seems unlikely), or they dislike the legal punishment they don't have to do anything. Many countries won't extradite murders to the US until the US agrees not to seek the death penalty.
This is what seems highly unlikely to me. I wonder what is written on this in the German media.
Every other country - the ones where he is a foreigner - can most certainly refuse his entry, though.
In any case, the bar for removing citizenship is typically extremely high.
Countries are usually under no particular obligation to repatriate their citizens, though, and they usually can’t force repatriation.
Article 16
Loss of citizenship may occur only pursuant to a law and, if it occurs against the will of the person affected, only if he does not become stateless as a result.[0]
There is a very narrow exception for certain configurations of dual citizenship, but there's no reason to believe this guy has a second citizenship––his name is more German than comfortable for my tastes, and it would probably be mentioned in the article because it would draw yet another government into this comic relief of an international incident.
Come to think of it, I now kinda wish he had some interesting dual nationality. Cuban, maybe. Or North Korea, if one can dream.
Bold claim, Karl.
While he is apparently wanted in Germany, a run-of-the-mill assault case doesn't trigger an international arrest warrant, and there's no other system that would share such information with foreign visa offices, except possibly the US. It was shared with India in this case only after he became an "issue".
I don't quite understand what the German bureaucracy is supposedly doing differently in this case due to this arrest warrant. I'm somewhat certain that it wouldn't change anything until he sets foot on German ground again. Germany would have both an interest in him returning (for justice, and to prevent any more international embarrassment this guy might provoke), as well as a responsibility to assist him that doesn't just go away if you commit a crime.
EDIT: Of course, assuming he is wanted, that would certainly explain why he would decline German help.
I imagine there are many people just like me. I happen to be quite lucky because in a country of 100 million, there are zero deaths and fewer than 300 cases, most of which are treated. Lots of things are open now and there are no strict social distancing laws anymore.
It all comes down to how much money you have saved and how long you can stretch it.
This article mentions one Sri Lankan passenger being taken home. I'm a Sri Lankan citizen although I no longer live there. Sri Lanka had its borders closed from March 22, but arranged flights to bring back citizens from situations like this. I can imagine Germany did the same.
It looks like this man just didn't want to leave. An airport with wifi, some shops, bathrooms and electricity, combined with the staff being kind enough to provide him with a recliner and amenities sounds much better than going to a place that he'd be eventually in trouble for his past crimes. If anything, the German consulate should forcefully take him if his criminal records are that severe, but it's their job and these are strange times to begin with.
According to the second airport official, Ziebat has mostly spent the last 54 days reading magazines and newspapers, talking to his friends and family over the phone, eating at some of the fast food outlets still in operation within the terminal, interacting with housekeeping and security staff, taking walks within the transit area, and using the airport’s washrooms and toilets. Authorities also provided him with a recliner, mosquito net, toothpaste, food and other basic essentials.
“He told officials that he can manage his expenses. He sleeps on the beds, benches, on the floors, wherever he feels like. He is alone in the transit area as it is not being used because the airport is closed for passengers,” said the second officer.
Gosh, I wish my life had been that good when everything went completely to hell. Sounds fairly cushy to me.
Sometimes the news tries to make it seem like they were unwitting victims who slipped through the cracks and are lost in the system. But no, they're actively acting pretty dumb too. Not much life lesson to be learned from these cases, just spectator sport.
This guy is wanted for assault, was in Vietnam, hmm? He'd be lucky if anyone wanted to make a movie out of it.
You don't know the story. Maybe it was self defense. We don't have all the details.
It would be nice if, during a global pandemic, we could not sit around being all judgy going "People fucked over as a consequence of this here global pandemic were just being idiots!"
This man is accused of several cases of assault, he may have seriously hurt somebody and they want to take it to court. I also do not see how your US race and gender comments below are relevant to this thread about a German man.
It would be terrible to be wrongly accused of assault. But it doesn't seem like something people should just ignore and give people the benefit of the doubt on.
Wholeheartedly agree. Humans of all stripes seem to have this need to place blame on others' failings on the person being "at fault" yet somehow their own mishaps are "bad luck." It's like the comment threads underneath lapses in security or getting phished. "Oh well, IIiiiiii wouldn't have fallen for that," until they inevitably do.
If humans were always perfectly capable of never screwing up, the entire liability insurance market would cease to exist.
Oh, it gets so much worse than that. If you are the "wrong kind of person" for some reason, misfortune comes at a much higher cost than for other people. In the US, white people generally suffer lighter consequences than people of color for the same mistakes. Men are generally judged less harshly than women for various things. Etc.
So it's more like saying "You fool! You shouldn't have done X! And, also, if you had any sense, you would have been born a different color/different gender/richer...etc"
Do you actually know someone in person who has said this in response to someone else's misfortune? Or are you just using the image of some random person saying this to fuel an anti-white man sentiment?
This is why we have terms like "Mansplaining" or "Whitesplaining." That doesn't mean a man or a white person simply acting like you are stupid and need it explained like you are five and then everything will work. It means that in the context of someone who is completely oblivious to the reality that when women do things exactly like men, they get different results socially and when people of color do things exactly like whites, they also get different results.
When two black men were arrested in Starbucks in Philadelphia for sitting there without ordering and asking to be let into the bathroom because they were waiting for someone they were meeting, one of the reasons it was controversial is because of the white patrons who protested it on the basis of "I've sat in here before without ordering and used the bathroom and no one ever called the cops on me."
I have zero interest in fueling anti-white man sentiment. That's absolutely not my agenda. But racism, sexism, etc are very much alive and well. Pretending they aren't is being part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Race and gender may still play a role, but acting like it is the determining factor in one's life is too much. People have agency over their lives, and can make choices to make their situations better. The fact that someone is white or male does not negate this. I live in rural Missouri, and there are plenty of white people who make bad decisions and hurt their prospects in the process.
Also, "whitesplaining" and "mansplaining" are really incredibly racist and sexist. You should really consider using other terms.
I did not read that at all. This is the key message IMHO:
> If you are the "wrong kind of person" for some reason, misfortune comes at a much higher cost than for other people. In the US, white people generally suffer lighter consequences than people of color for the same mistakes. Men are generally judged less harshly than women for various things. Etc.
More eloquently explained here: https://www.quora.com/Is-life-easier-as-a-white-person/answe...
Keyword: "easier"
No one is saying they don't have agency, but sometimes, having a headstart is all it takes for a big difference in results over the years, not to mention if that advantage doesn't go away your whole life.
Perhaps beside the point, but also some people do not believe in 'agency' or 'free will' as such, myself included. I consider myself privileged, and I'm not white.
> Also, "whitesplaining" and "mansplaining" are really incredibly racist and sexist. You should really consider using other terms.
That we agree on.
I appear to be the only woman to have ever spent time on the leader board of HN. My gender continues to prove to be a barrier to effective networking here and I have been here nearly eleven years and between my old account and this one I have over 50k karma, which would put me fairly high on the leader board if it were under one account.
I'm not acting like race or gender are "the determining factor," but my experiences in the last decade or so make it painfully clear that a factor like gender can be stubbornly hard to overcome, no matter how hard you try and all that.
I made it my hobby to try to get articles to the front page of HN while I was homeless. I hit the leader board about a month after I got myself back into housing without going through some program and then I changed my handle. So for various reasons when I share my thoughts and observations on things like poverty or gender issues, some folks here are interested.
My only request is that you avoid emotional and logical amplification of reality. Using terms like mansplaining and whitesplaining, and using phrases like "And, also, if you had any sense, you would have been born a different color/different gender/richer...etc" exaggerates a bad situation, makes people in those identity groups defensive, and weakens your argument. Reality is unfair enough that just highlighting it will lead to change eventually.
As noted above, I don't generally use those terms. You are "using" them yourself currently by including them in your comment telling me I am wrong to "use" them.
There's a pandemic on and I haven't slept. I don't really care to discuss this further with you. But for the record I don't think you have any right whatsoever to "request" that I behave in accordance with your wishes while leveling BS accusations in an uncharitable reading of my comment that you refuse to back down on.
;)
> "He added that because India did not give Ziebat a visa due to his criminal background — criminal offences are taken into consideration when assessing individual visa cases in India — he remains unauthorised to leave the airport’s transit area. In India, an international passenger can normally stay in transit for just one day, and requires Indian visa to step out of this designated space for travellers passing through the country. The officer added that Ziebat has also not formally applied for an Indian visa."
Also these flights are being operated at full capacity, no social distancing. People have to pay for seats beforehand too, while other countries like US only requires an indemnity bond for future payment for evacuation flights.
Well if a rule was unreasonably harsh you hardly need a material change in the situation to change it, do you? You can't complain that they weren't letting Indians into India, and then complain that they suddenly started to let Indians back into India.
Mathematically, someone can say P, or not-P, or "P and not-P". One of those is most obviously wrong.
Much of the reason browser's don't block simple things is that advertisers will happily write a memory-hogging CPU-hogging virtual machine to force the feature to run anyway. You can't win by trying to control what hostile code does after you let it run. Block untrusted domains from running code on your machine.
It's a JWPlayer video, maybe they have some tricks up their sleeve.