In reality, this immunity is granted to keep diplomats from being harassed while they do their work in unfriendly nations. It makes sense, but as you can suspect, people abuse the living hell out of it, often to a hilarious and/or terrifying degree ...

Some of you only know the concept of diplomatic immunity from movies like Lethal Weapon 2, which have featured evil diplomats who use their immunity as a "Get Out of Jail Free" card after a hard day of killing, drug and firearm trafficking and attempting to blow up the toilets of senior policemen who have had enough of this shit.

6 The Case of the Pipe-Smoking Terrorist

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In 2010, Mohammed al-Madadi, an envoy from Qatar, was flying from Washington, D.C., to Denver, when he suddenly found himself craving a smoke. From here on out, we want you to imagine what would have happened had, say, you done this.

Al-Madadi retired into the bathroom, turned off the smoke alarm, took out a pipe (because if you're about to break the rules, you might as well go all out) and puffed away until a flight attendant smelled smoke and got suspicious. The flight attendant confronted al-Madadi, who emerged from the smoke-scented bathroom still holding his lighter, and asked what exactly the passenger was doing in there.

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Al-Madadi, possibly offended that this puny non-diplomat insisted on talking to him, answered with a blank stare and responded that he had, in fact, been trying to light his shoes on fire. Unfazed, the flight attendant asked al-Madadi for his lighter, which he of course refused.

So, let's recap: A suspiciously behaving man exits a bathroom that omits a strange smoke, makes a direct reference to Richard Reid's post 9/11 shoe-bombing attempt and refuses to cooperate with the staff. On a plane.

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From that point, things escalated like the world's strangest Benny Hill sketch. The plane's U.S. marshals were called over to calm al-Madadi down. They grabbed him, put him in his seat and, while keeping an eye on him, alerted the pilot of the situation. The pilot, in turn, kicked things up a notch by sending out a "potential terrorist" status report, which led to the usual motions for this kind of situation, including sending out fighter jets and actually alerting President Obama about a terrorist scenario. You know, usual diplomat stuff.

Al-Madadi's ass was detained the second the plane landed, which is when it was found that he was, no shit, on his way to meet with a terrorist who was implicated in 9/11.