The opinion that the lands of diplomatic missions are enclaves within the hosts that are legally being a foreign territory. We checked how fair a similar opinion is.

On February 22, 1984, US President Ronald Reagan, justifying the bombardment of the territory of Lebanon by response to the shelling of the American embassy, declared: "This is the territory of the United States."

On August 16, 2012, the British police penetrated the territory of the Embassy of Ecuador, where the founder of the WikiLeaks website Julian Assange took refuge. Commenting on the air "New FM"The leading expert of the Center for the Political Conjuncture Dmitry Abzalov said that "the territory of the embassy and land under the embassy is also the territory of another country under the Vienna Convention, so penetration into the territory can only occur with the permission of the Genconsul or Ambassador."

On October 2, 2018, the famous journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed on the territory of the Saudi Arabic Consulate in Istanbul. In response to the anxiety of local officials, representatives of the Arab side They answered: “We are ready to let the Turkish authorities to search the premises. The room is a sovereign territory, but we will allow them to enter and search and do everything they want. If they ask about this, of course, we will allow them. We have nothing to hide. ”

Similar information can also be read on the legal reference site "Criminal Code" (“Legally, the territory of the embassy is an enclave and belongs to the country that is represented. Thus, the laws of the state surrounding the embassy do not apply to it”). Such an interpretation is widespread as in fiction, and in society as a whole.

Let's look into the aforementioned Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relationswhich since 1961 acts as the main document governing the relevant sphere of international law. This is what information can be found there regarding the territorial question. Article 21.1: “The state of stay should either assist the accredited state in acquisition on its territory, according to its laws, the premises necessary for its representation, or provide assistance to the accredited state in the receipt of premises in any other way.”

And that’s all. In other words, the Convention refers to Dmitry Abzalov does not say anything that the territory of the diplomatic mission legally belongs to the accrediting country. Moreover, the phrase “its territory” in it was used in relation to the state of the embassy. Another thing is that the state of stay is “a special duty to take all appropriate measures to protect the premises of the representative office from any invasion or damage and to prevent any violation of the calmness of representation or insulting its dignity” (Article 30). In addition, “the premises of the representative office, the objects of their situation and other property located in them, as well as the means of transportation of the representative office use immunity from the search, requisition, arrest and executive actions” (Article 22). But this is a slightly different question.

In the substantiation of the statement we are considering, such a thing often appears as Exorritoriality. Back in the XVII century, the Dutch lawyer Hugo Grotius proposed the following interpretation: “The general rule is that the one who is located in a foreign territory obeys the laws of this territory; With the general consent of the nations, the exclusion in relation to ambassadors, since the ambassadors, due to the well -known convention, are, as it were, outside the territory and thereby are not connected by the civil laws of the people among which they live. ” This principle was taken as a basis in international diplomacy and continues to operate today. So, according to the same Vienna Convention, the diplomatic agent (and only he) uses a number of privileges - in particular, immunity from the criminal jurisdiction of the state of stay (Article 31).

Moreover, as modern Researchers, “Since the fiction of being in its own country was not only the personality of the ambassador, but also to the premises occupied by it, this theory in its absolute form served as an excuse for the right of asylum in diplomatic premises, and for the right of the ambassador to jurisdiction of their staff.” However, the theory of extraterritoriality began to lose its authority from the second half of the 19th century and in many components is in conflict with the principles of modern international law. Therefore, in practice, it leads to erroneous conclusions and gives rise to many misunderstandings. Currently, the theory of extraterritoriality is practically not applied, although references to it are found in periodical and diplomatic practice. Usually extraterritoriality is mentioned in a narrower sense.

And finally, a striking example of a specific legal answer to the question of interest to us. On November 4, 1979, members of the organization of Muslim students seized the US Embassy in Tehran and for 14 months held the persons there as hostages. Later, the former hostages and their relatives sued both Iran (organizers of the attack) and the American side (hosts of the embassy), requiring the latest monetary compensation. However, the US Court of Appeal Decidedthat the territory of the country's embassy "remains the territory of the host state and is not the territory of the United States." In the context of our question, such emergency situations, of course, are rare. More often you can hear The fact that the person, having visited the embassy, “visited his native land,” or that the child “born in the territory of the relevant country” was born in the embassy. However, all these interpretations do not have a legal justification.