New Delhi (NVI): Pakistan has violated the Vienna Convention in the Kulbhushan Jadhav case, International Court of Justice (ICJ) President Abdulqawi A Ysusf told the United Nations General Assembly.
Addressing the General Assembly on October 30, the ICJ President said , “In its Judgment, the Court found that Pakistan had violated its obligations under Article 36 of the Vienna Convention and that appropriate remedies were due in this case”.
India however said on October 31 it has received the statement but cant react to it quickly as to how India is going to formulate its strategy on the matter.
The ICJ President said that one of the issues that the Court had to examine was the question of whether the rights relating to consular access, set out in Article 36 of the Vienna Convention, were in any manner to be excluded in a situation where the individual concerned was suspected of carrying out acts of espionage, according to his speech hosted on the ICJ website.
The Court noted in that regard “There is no provision in the Vienna Convention containing a reference to cases of espionage; nor does the Article concerning consular access, Article 36, exclude from its scope certain categories of persons, such as those suspected of espionage. Therefore, the Court concluded that Article 36 of the Vienna Convention was applicable in full to the case at hand”.
He said that another legal question was whether a bilateral agreement on consular access concluded between the two Parties in 2008 could be read as excluding the applicability of the Vienna Convention. The Court considered that this was not the case.
However, the ICJ presided added, “Following its ruling, it received a communication dated 1 August 2019 from Pakistan confirming its commitment to implementing the Judgment of 17 July 2019 in full. In particular, Pakistan stated that Mr. Jadhav had been immediately informed of his rights under the Vienna Convention and that the consular post of the High Commission of India in Islamabad had been invited to visit him on 2 August 2019”.
