The police's release of a high-ranking Mongolian official, accused of sexually assaulting a flight attendant, is sparking controversy.
According to the Incheon International Airport Police, Monday, Mongolia's Constitutional Court Chairman Dorj Odbayar allegedly groped a flight attendant's buttocks and one of his colleagues put his arm around another attendant's shoulders.
The alleged harassment occurred on a Korean Air flight from Ulaanbaatar to Incheon Thursday night. Flight attendants detained them and reported them to the airport police upon arrival.
The police officers went to the arrival area of Terminal 2 that night to question the Mongolian officials. However, the Mongolian Embassy in Korea said Odbayar and the accompanying officials had diplomatic immunity in accordance with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, according to the police.
The international treaty, adopted in 1961, ensures diplomats are given safe passage and are not subject to prosecution under the host country's laws.
As a result, the police released them without questioning and his colleague left for Singapore the same day.
The police explained their decision to release them was made after comprehensively considering all the circumstances, including their impending transfers.
However, the foreign ministry said the release was unwarranted, raising questions over his qualification for diplomatic immunity.
"Diplomatic immunity is applied to the top levels of a state, including the head of state, the head of an administration and the foreign minister," a ministry official said. "The Mongolian Constitutional Court chief is not eligible for immunity."
Based on the foreign ministry's judgment, the airport police questioned Odbayar, who was at the transfer area of the airport heading for Bali, Indonesia, where he was supposed to attend an Association of Asian Constitutional Courts and Equivalent Institutions meeting.
After about one-and-a-half hours in the police detention room within the airport on Friday, the court chief flew to Indonesia.
Amid escalating public anger and the gravity of the issue, the Incheon Metropolitan Police Agency has taken over the case and they interviewed the two flight attendants, Saturday.
According to the police, the attendants told the investigators they found the experience unpleasant and wanted Odbayar and his colleague to be punished.
Meanwhile, the Mongolian Constitutional Court denied the allegations surrounding its chairman, saying they are "groundless and false."
"An attempt was made to blame the chairman of the Constitutional Court in the act of misconduct possibly committed by another citizen of Mongolia, who was sitting in the row behind him during the flight to Korea. Chairman of the Constitutional Court Dorj Odbayar has turned to corresponding organizations concerning the wrongful accusation," its spokesman said in a statement via Mongolia's Montsame News Agency.
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