US-Pakistan relations strained as 'CIA agent' held by court over shootings

[alp227]

Source: The Guardian

Relations between Pakistan and the United States are under strain after a Lahore court refused to release an American who shot dead two Pakistanis and led to the death of a third last week.

The US embassy in Islamabad says that Raymond Davis has diplomatic immunity and should be released immediately. But the court said it would decide whether he has immunity. It set a second hearing in a fortnight's time.

Davis, 36, was driving in Lahore on Thursday when, Pakistani police allege, two men on motorbikes, Mohammad Faheem and Faizan Haider, tried to rob him at gunpoint. In court on Friday, he admitted killing them but said it had been self-defence; the US state department endorsed this claim on Monday. Another Pakistani was killed when he was hit by an American car on its way to rescue Davis.

The court is attempting to establish Davis's role at the embassy, with unconfirmed reports in US and Pakistan media describing him as with a private security firm or the CIA.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/01/us-pakistan-lahore-raymond-davis

[bobthedrummer]

1. The Unrec crew has this news thread targeted too for some damn reason-K&R

[Nihil]

2. Not unexpected ...

CIA operative shooting people in sovereign nation? Check
Foreign news that doesn't include any celebrities? Check
Blatant American exceptionalism? Check

You think that the crew want this sort of thread to be seen?
:shrug:

[gratuitous]

3. What? You can't shoot two guys dead in the street?

I note that the police are saying that the victims were trying to rob Davis at gunpoint, but I'm not sure how that fact was established. It seems there's a delicate line being walked: If Davis has diplomatic immunity as an embassy employee, he's not supposed to be armed. If he wasn't an embassy employee, and it wasn't illegal for him to be packing heat, then he doesn't have diplomatic immunity.

I wonder what the Pakistani on the street thinks about this episode?

[bobthedrummer]

4. ^