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DIPLOMATIC ROW: PAKISTAN POLICE RAIDED N. KOREA EMBASSY FOR LIQUOR STORAGE

By Susan Lewis

8-4-2022



Credit: Micha Brandli/Unsplash

Pakistan and North Korea were involved in a diplomatic row last month in which the North Korean Embassy in Islamabad protested about a Pakistani police raid in their premises for allegedly storing huge quantity of liquor.

Pakistan is a dry country where its Muslim population are banned from consuming and storing liquors, but foreign diplomats are allowed to buy and store certain amounts.

As reported by local media The News daily, the North Korean mission said in a protest letter that seven police officers entered the embassy on 7 March through a back gate without their consent to search a storeroom in the backyard.

When diplomatic staffs tried to stop the search, the police officers threatened them with guns, the letter said, while adding that such act violated the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

The Vienna Convention stipulates that sovereign states have jurisdiction over their embassies and diplomatic missions in foreign countries and these premises are deemed inviolable.

Pakistan’s Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid had apologised to the North Korean mission and said it is a misunderstanding on their side.

“It should not have happened,” Rashid told reporters in a news conference. “It is not our job to monitor what is going and coming out from there (Embassy). Our job is to provide security to embassies. This was a mistake, we apologise.” 

The officer who led the search was said to have been disciplined by Pakistani police force for misconduct. He initially claimed he conducted the raid with a search warrant and later said he was unaware that the house was an embassy.

The allegation that North Korean diplomats in Pakistan stockpile booze and sell to the black market has long been circulating.

In 2017, a North Korean diplomat reported a burglary in his private residence in which thousands of bottles of whisky, beer and French wine worth USD150,000 were said to have been stolen.

The burglars were later arrested, they turned out to be policemen who had broken into the diplomat’s residence and tried to keep the stash of booze for themselves. 

The Reuters news agency quoted senior Pakistani police and customs officials as saying that the large collection of alcohol led them into believing that some North Korean diplomats are involved in illegal trading of liquor.

(the writer can be contacted at: info@thewinechronicle.com)

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