CIA IN PAKISTAN

BY INAAM.CHANDIO,
ON APRIL 18TH, 2011

No, but sometimes it helps.

Pakistan’s military is demanding that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) sharply cut back its activities in the country in the wake of undercover agent Raymond Davis’s arrest on murder charges and subsequent release. In addition to scaling back the number of CIA drone strikes on Pakistani targets, Pakistani Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has insisted on the withdrawal of all contractors working for the CIA and all operatives like Davis, who are working in “unilateral” assignments, meaning that only one country (read: not Pakistan) is aware of their presence. But since when does the CIA need a country’s permission to conduct intelligence operations? Isn’t the whole point that the local government isn’tsupposed to know they’re there?
Continue reading CIA IN PAKISTAN

The shootout, the US agent and the media

By Bahram Zackarya, on March 9th, 2011

In late January, Raymond Davis, an American working in Pakistan, allegedly shot and killed two men who he claimed were trying to rob him. Soon after the shooting it emerged in the Pakistani media that Davis was a CIA operative, but that information did not surface in the US media until weeks later. That is because – at the behest of the US government – many media outlets there withheld that information. It was not until the UK’s Guardian newspaper reported that Davis worked for the CIA that the US media began acknowledging it.

Continue reading The shootout, the US agent and the media

US gives fresh details of CIA killer in Pakistan

Raymond Davis, held in Pakistan on double murder charges for a shooting in Lahore last month, is employed by the CIA as a contractor. Photograph: Reuters

US officials have provided fresh details about Raymond Davis, the

CIAagent at the centre of a diplomatic stand-off in

Pakistan, including confirmation that he had worked for the private security contractor Xe, formerly known as Blackwater. They also disclosed for the first time that he had been providing security for a CIA team tracking militants.

Davis was attached to the CIA's Global Response Staff, whose duties include protecting case officers when they meet with sources. He was familiarising himself with a sensitive area of Lahore on the day he shot dead two Pakistanis.

The New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press and other media outlets reported for the first time that Davis is a CIA employee. They said they had been aware of his status but kept it under wraps at the request of US officials who said they feared for his safety if involvement with the spy agency was to come out. The officials claimed that he is at risk in the prison in Lahore. The officials released them from their obligation after

the Guardian on Sunday reported that Davis was a CIA agent.

Davis shot dead two Pakistanis in Lahore last month

who he says had been trying to rob him. A third Pakistani man was killed by a car driven by Americans apparently on their way to rescue Davis.

Confirmation that he worked for Xe could prove even more problematic than working for the CIA, given the extent of hatred towards Blackwater, whose staff have gained a reputation in Pakistan as trigger-happy. For Pakistanis the word "Blackwater" has become a byword for covert American operations targeting the country's nuclear capability. Newspaper reports have been filled with lurid reports of lawless operatives roaming the country.

US officials have reiterated their concern about Lahore's Kot Lakhpat jail where Davis is being held, saying he had been moved to a separate section of the prison, that the guards' guns had been taken away from for fear they might kill him, and that detainees had been previously killed by guards. They are also concerned about protesters storming the prison or that he might be poisoned, and that dogs were being used to taste or smell the food for poison.

However, the authorities in Pakistan stressed the stringent measures they have put in place to protect Davis in Kot Lakhpat following angry public rallies in which his effigy was burned and threats from extremist clerics.

PJ Crowley, the US state department spokesman, said: "Obviously, we are concerned about his safety. We have had multiple conversations with the government of Pakistan regarding his current surroundings. They have told us that he is in the safest possible location in Lahore. And clearly, we hold the government of Pakistan fully responsible for his safety."

Surveillance cameras are trained on his cell in an isolation wing, and a ring of paramilitary troops are posted outside. About 25 jihadi prisoners have been transferred to other facilities.

The revelations about Davis will complicate further

the impasse between the US and Pakistan. Washington says he has diplomatic immunity and should be released but the Pakistan government is in a bind, facing the danger of a public backlash if it complies.

Until Sunday, the US had said Davis was a diplomat, doing technical and administrative work at the embassy. It says that because he has diplomatic immunity, he should be released immediately.

The Pakistani prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, told parliament on Monday he would safeguard the country's "sovereignty and dignity" as it sought to resolve the diplomatic impasse with the US. "We are firmly resolved to adopt a course that accords with the dictates of justice and the rule of law. My government will not compromise on Pakistan's sovereignty and dignity," said Gilani.

The Obama administration is exerting fierce pressure on Pakistan to release Davis. But President Asif Ali Zardari's government, faced with a wave of public outrage, has prevaricated on the issue, and says it cannot decide on immunity issue until 14 March. For many Pakistanis the case has come to represent their difficult relationship with the US, in which multibillion dollar aid packages are mingled with covert activities targeting Islamist extremists.

Davis is currently on Pakistan's "exit control list", meaning he cannot leave the country without permission. But the two men who came to his rescue in a jeep that knocked over and killed a motorcyclist are believed to have already fled the country. Davis claimed to be acting in self-defence, firing on a pair of suspected robbers. But eyebrows were raised when it emerged that he shot the men 10 times, one as he fled the scene.

Pakistani prosecutors say Davis used excessive force and have charged him with two counts of murder and one of illegal possession of a Glock 9mm pistol. There have also been claims that the dead men were working for the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, with orders to follow Davis.

The military spy agency cooperates with the CIA in its tribal belt drone programme, but resents US intelligence collection elsewhere in the country.In spite of the lurid conspiracy tales in Pakistan about Blackwater, US officials say that in reality Blackwater has had two major contracts in Pakistan - loading missiles onto CIA drones at the secret Shamsi airbase in Balochistan, and supervising the construction of a police training facility in Peshawar. The Davis furore has not, however, stopped the controversial drone strike programme. News emerged of a fresh attack on a militant target in South Waziristan, the first in nearly one month. Pakistani intelligence officials told AP that foreigners were among the dead including three people from Turkmenistan and two Arabs.

Rocky relations

The CIA and Pakistan's ISI have long had a rocky relationship. It started in the 1980s jihad, when the ISI funnelled billions of dollars in CIA-funded weapons to anti-Soviet rebels in Afghanistan.

But the two fell out in 2001 over CIA accusations that the ISI was playing a "double game" – attacking some Islamist militants while secretly supporting others.

In August 2008 the CIA deputy chief, Stephen Kappes, flew to Islamabad with evidence suggesting the ISI plotted the attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul that killed 54 people. The ISI, in turn, complained that the US came with unrealistic expectations and an aggressive attitude.

Yet at the same time the agencies co-operated closely, mostly on the CIA drone campaign against al-Qaida militants along the Afghan border.

In 2009 the ISI praised the CIA for killing the Pakistani

Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud. But recently things soured again. Last December the CIA station chief was forced to quit Pakistan after being publicly identified (US officials blamed an ISI leak); while Pakistani spies were angered that their chief, General Shuja Pasha, was named in a US lawsuit brought in a New York court by victims of the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Declan Walsh

Raymond Davis to be tried in jail

Published: February 22, 2011

Police escort an armoured vehicle carrying Raymond Davis, as it arrives at court in Lahore on February 11, 2011. PHOTO: AFP/FILE

LAHORE: Lahore’s session court on Tuesday approved a jail trial of Raymond Davis, which will commence on February 25 at Kot Lakhpat Jail in the provincial capital.

The Punjab government’s prosecution department had submitted an application for the jail trial in the court of Additional Sessions Judge Mohammad Yousaf.

The application cited security reasons for the trial to be held in court, stating that it was not possible to produce Davis in court on different dates.

The court accepted the application and allowed the jail trial.

Non-diplomatic identity card

A letter from the United States Embassy reveals that the mission had asked the Pakistani Foreign Office to issue a non-diplomatic identity card to Raymond Davis in January 2010.

The letter was produced by Senator Tariq Azeem on Express 24/7 show Witness with Quatrina.

Commenting on the letter, a US Embassy spokesperson said the Pakistan government’s external procedures on issuing diplomatic or non-diplomatic identity cards were not relevant to the Davis case.

The official said Pakistan’s procedures had no bearing on Raymond Davis who enjoys diplomatic immunity under the Vienna Convention.

The spokesperson said the letter shown on the show was a formal notification by the US government stating that Davis was a member of the administrative and technical staff at the embassy.

Driver of consulate vehicle still missing

Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) says the Punjab government sent six letters to the federal government, requesting assistance in finding the driver of the US consulate vehicle that ran over a third Pakistani after the Lahore shooting.

The Civil Lines Superintendent of Police (SP) also contacted the US Consulate in Lahore for information on the vehicle and its driver, but the consulate could not comment as it had not been directed by the US government to do so.

American Who Sparked Diplomatic Crisis Over Lahore Shooting Was CIA Spy

Pakistani authorities charged Raymond Davis with murder, but the Obamaadministration has insisted he is an 'administrative and technical official' attached to the US consulate in Lahore and is entitled to diplomatic immunity.

The American who shot dead two men in Lahore, triggering a diplomatic crisis between Pakistan and the US, is a CIA agent who was on assignment at the time.

Raymond Davis has been the subject of widespread speculation since he opened fire with a semi-automatic Glock pistol on the two men who had pulled up in front of his car at a red light on 25 January.

Pakistani authorities charged him with murder, but the Obama administration has insisted he is an "administrative and technical official" attached to its Lahore consulate and has diplomatic immunity.

Based on interviews in the US and Pakistan, the Guardian can confirm that the 36-year-old former special forces soldier is employed by the CIA. "It's beyond a shadow of a doubt," said a senior Pakistani intelligence official. The revelation may complicate American efforts to free Davis, who insists he was acting in self-defence against a pair of suspected robbers, who were both carrying guns.

Pakistani prosecutors accuse the spy of excessive force, saying he fired 10 shots and got out of his car to shoot one man twice in the back as he fled. The man's body was found 30 feet from his motorbike.

"It went way beyond what we define as self-defence. It was not commensurate with the threat," a senior police official involved in the case told the Guardian.

The Pakistani government is aware of Davis's CIA status yet has kept quiet in the face of immense American pressure to free him under the Vienna convention. Last week President Barack Obama described Davis as "our diplomat" and dispatched his chief diplomatic troubleshooter, Senator John Kerry, to Islamabad. Kerry returned home empty-handed.

Many Pakistanis are outraged at the idea of an armed American rampaging through their second-largest city. Analysts have warned of Egyptian-style protests if Davis is released. The government, fearful of a backlash, says it needs until 14 March to decide whether Davis enjoys immunity.

A third man was crushed by an American vehicle as it rushed to Davis's aid. Pakistani officials believe its occupants were CIA because they came from the house where Davis lived and were armed.

The US refused Pakistani demands to interrogate the two men and on Sunday a senior Pakistani intelligence official said they had left the country. "They have flown the coop, they are already in America," he said.

ABC News reported that the men had the same diplomatic visas as Davis. It is not unusual for US intelligence officers, like their counterparts round the world, to carry diplomatic passports.

The US has accused Pakistan of illegally detaining him and riding roughshod over international treaties. Angry politicians have proposed slashing Islamabad's $1.5bn (£900m) annual aid.

But Washington's case is hobbled by its resounding silence on Davis's role. He served in the US special forces for 10 years before leaving in 2003 to become a security contractor. A senior Pakistani official said he believed Davis had worked with Xe, the firm formerly known as Blackwater.

Pakistani suspicions about Davis's role were stoked by the equipment police confiscated from his car: an unlicensed pistol, a long-range radio, a GPS device, an infrared torch and a camera with pictures of buildings around Lahore.

"This is not the work of a diplomat. He was doing espionage and surveillance activities," said the Punjab law minister, Rana Sanaullah, adding he had "confirmation" that Davis was a CIA employee.

A number of US media outlets learned about Davis's CIA role but have kept it under wraps at the request of the Obama administration. A Colorado television station, 9NEWS, made a connection after speaking to Davis's wife. She referred its inquiries to a number in Washington which turned out to be the CIA. The station removed the CIA reference from its website at the request of the US government.

Some reports, quoting Pakistani intelligence officials, have suggested that the men Davis killed, Faizan Haider, 21, and Muhammad Faheem, 19, were agents of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency (ISI) and had orders to shadow Davis because he crossed a "red line".

A senior police official confirmed US claims that the men were petty thieves – investigators found stolen mobiles, foreign currency and weapons on them – but did not rule out an intelligence link.

A senior ISI official denied the dead men worked for the spy agency but admitted the CIA relationship had been damaged. "We are a sovereign country and if they want to work with us, they need to develop a trusting relationship on the basis of equality. Being arrogant and demanding is not the way to do it," he said.

Tensions between the spy agencies have been growing. The CIA Islamabad station chief was forced to leave in December after being named in a civil lawsuit. The ISI was angered when its chief, General Shuja Pasha, was named in a New York lawsuit related to the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Although the two spy services co-operate in the CIA's drone campaign along the Afghan border, there has not been a drone strike since 23 January – the longest lull since June 2009. Experts are unsure whether both events are linked.

Davis awaits his fate in Kot Lakhpat jail in Lahore. Pakistani officials say they have taken exceptional measures to ensure his safety, including ringing the prison with paramilitary Punjab Rangers. The law minister, Sanaullah, said Davis was in a "high security zone" and was receiving food from visitors from the US consulate.

Sanaullah said 140 foreigners were in the facility, many on drug charges. Press reports have speculated that the authorities worry the US could try to spring Davis in a "Hollywood-style sting". "All measures for his security have been taken," said the ISI official. "He's as safe as can be."

Obama Calls Raymond Davis "Our man in Pakistan"

"With respect to Mr. Davis, our diplomat in Pakistan, we've got a very simple principle here that every country in the world that is party to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations has upheld in the past and should uphold in the future, and that is if our diplomats are in another country, then they are not subject to that country's local prosecution."
--President Obama, Feb. 15, 2011

Raymond Davis is a former Special Forces soldier who, according to the State Department, works for the U.S. embassy in Pakistan. Last month, he shot and killed two Pakistani men in Lahore under mysterious circumstances.

Davis has claimed the men were trying to rob him. The incident took place about eight miles from the U.S. consulate, and Davis was carrying loaded weapons and had a GPS satellite device in his possession. U.S. officials say the men pointed weapons at Davis and he thought his life was in danger. Police say Davis shot each victim five times, including in their backs, and lied to police about how he arrived at the scene.

In a video of his questioning released by Pakistani police, Davis identifies himself as an employee at the consulate in Lahore, saying, "I just work as a consultant there."

Another consulate vehicle, a Toyota Land Cruiser with tinted windows -- which, according to a police report, arrived after the incident in an apparent effort to rescue Davis -- struck and killed a motorcyclist in the aftermath of the shooting. The widow of one of the men killed by Davis then committed suicide.

Four dead people and an imprisoned American are a recipe for a diplomatic disaster. The United States has insisted that Davis, as an embassy employee, has diplomatic immunity and must be released. Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), a major backer of $3 billion in aid to Pakistan, flew to the country this week to press for Davis's release and predicted the case would be completed "in the next few days." But a Pakistani court on Thursday gave the Pakistani government three more weeks to determine whether Davis qualifies for diplomatic immunity.

President Obama raised the stakes in the dispute at his news conference this week, when he referred to Davis as "our diplomat in Pakistan." The president's phrasing went beyond the State Department's assertion that Davis was a member of the "administrative and technical staff" at the embassy.

Senior State Department officials have said that Davis was not supposed to carry a weapon in Pakistan, while other U.S. officials said that he was a security contractor and did have permission to carry the weapon.

Pakistani news reports have said Davis worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, but the United States has steadfastly declined to say anything beyond the fact that he works for the U.S. government.

Clearly the pin-striped set has evolved over the years, but many Pakistanis have alleged that Davis is a spy who must face justice for the killings. So does he have diplomatic immunity?

The Facts

The key document governing diplomatic immunity is, as the president stated, the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, specifically articles 29, 31, 37, and 39. The articles must be read together to get a full understanding of their meaning. Here are the key points:

A diplomatic agent "shall not be liable to any form of arrest or detention." (article 29)
"A diplomatic agent shall enjoy immunity from the criminal jurisdiction of the receiving State," with certain exceptions involving property and commercial activity. (article 31)
"Members of the administrative and technical staff of the mission, together with members of their families" will have the same privileges and immunities in articles 29 and 31 as long as they are not nationals or permanent residents of the country. The one exception is that they are not immune from civil suits for acts performed outside the course of their official duties. (In other words, they can be sued if they run someone over when they are off on vacation.) (article 37)
"Every person entitled to privileges and immunities shall enjoy them from the moment he enters the territory of the receiving State on proceeding to take up his post or, if already in its territory, from the moment when his appointment is notified to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs or such other ministry as may be agreed." (article 39)

The U.S. embassy appears to have complicated matters by first sending a diplomatic note to the Pakistani Foreign Ministry on Jan. 27 describing Davis as "an employee of U.S. Consulate General Lahore and holder of a diplomatic passport." A second note, on Feb. 3, described him as "a member of the administrative and technical staff of the U.S. embassy."

The difference in the phrasing of Davis's employment has allowed Pakistani officials to argue that Davis is actually covered by 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, and thus has a lesser form of immunity.

However, Article 43 of that Convention states that "consular officers and consular employees shall not be amenable to the jurisdiction of the judicial or administrative authorities of the receiving State in respect of acts performed in the exercise of consular functions." There are exceptions for some civil disputes, such as "damage arising from an accident in the receiving State caused by a vehicle, vessel or aircraft."

The State Department insists that Davis was identified to the Pakistani government as a member of the technical and administrative staff of the embassy when he arrived in the country, and as such enjoys full immunity. John B. Bellinger III, a partner at Arnold & Porter who was the chief State Department legal adviser in the Bush administration, said in any case he would be fully covered as a consular employee as well.

"It's my understanding that State notified him as a member of the Embassy A&T staff, not consular staff," Bellinger said. "But consular staff also enjoy immunity from the jurisdiction of the receiving state with respect to their consular functions."

Bellinger added: "People are overblowing the 'administrative and technical' staff distinction and making it sound like it's something nefarious, which it is not. It is not a made-up term. A&T staff are an accepted category of staff assigned to an Embassy or Consulate, and are described in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations."

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said that U.S. diplomats do not carry cards attesting to their diplomatic immunity. "Once we provide a diplomatic note that an individual has arrived in country, from that point forward, he or she has diplomatic immunity," he said.

Complicating matters even further is that the language of the 1972 Pakistani law implementing the 1961 Vienna Convention puts the onus on the country's weak government to certify that the person in question has diplomatic immunity if a dispute arises. "The federal government is scratching its head, struggling [with] what stand to take, how to bridge this gap between the Vienna Convention and the deficient implementing law," Pakistani international law expert Ahmer Bilal Soofi told National Public Radio.

In the United States, there have been several high-profile cases in which foreigners have escaped prosecution because of diplomatic immunity, at one point leading to an unsuccessful push in Congress to strip relatives and dependents of diplomats of the privilege.

In 1982, the son of the Brazilian ambassador to the United States shot and seriously wounded a D.C. nightclub bouncer and escaped prosecution because of diplomatic immunity. The State Department even allowed him to stay in Washington.

In 1981, the son of a low-ranking attaché at the Ghanian U.N. mission was arrested in New York after a series of violent rapes at knifepoint. Although two of the victims positively identified their alleged assailant, he was released 45 minutes after he was taken to a police station for questioning and later returned to Ghana. "He looked at me when he left the precinct house and snickered and said, 'I told you I had diplomatic immunity,' " the police detective later told Congress. "He was looking at the women, too, and laughing. They were crying hysterically."

In 1997, Gueorgui Makharadze, the number-two official in the Georgian embassy and a rising diplomatic star, killed a teenage girl in a drunk-driving incident in Washington. In that case, the Georgian government waived his immunity after a request from the State Department; he went on trial and was convicted of manslaughter. The Georgian president at the time, Eduard Shevardnadze, called for new rules on diplomatic immunity, saying, "I cannot imagine diplomacy and politics devoid of moral principle."

The Pinocchio Test

If the State Department is correct and Davis was identified as a member of the embassy's administrative and technical staff when he arrived in Pakistan -- and he was accepted by Pakistan on that basis -- then he should be covered by the Vienna Convention and receive diplomatic immunity, no matter what his job was or how heinous his crimes. The United States has upheld that standard in the past, letting alleged criminals go free. It also does not matter what agency Davis works for back in the United States; U.S. embassies are often staffed with personnel from the Defense Department, Agriculture Department and the like, and they all have diplomatic immunity.

(Many governments place spies on their diplomatic employment list, and if caught by the host country, they are often ejected or exchanged for another spy or prisioner. Some Pakistani officials have suggested that Davis could be exchanged for Aafia Siddiqui, an American-educated Pakistani who was sentenced to 86 years in prison for trying to kill her American interrogators in Afghanistan.)

President Obama, however, may have pushed the envelope when he referred to Davis as "our diplomat." Davis may have had diplomatic cover, but not many diplomats carry a Glock pistol -- and then use it with lethal results. The circumstances of his employment -- and the incident in Lahore -- remain too murky to make a definitive judgment on the president's statement at this point.

By Glenn Kessler

Withholding Judgment

‘Davis was after me’

Pakistani doctor believes Davis wanted to assassinate him. PHOTO: FILE

LAHORE: A Pakistani-American doctor believes Raymond Davis came to Pakistan to assassinate him because he had sued the former US president George W Bush for $165 trillion for twice detaining him illegally.

Dr Muhammd Adnan Bhutta, an orthopaedic surgeon currently working at the Lahore General Hospital, was holding a press conference at the Lahore Press Club on Sunday.

He feared that his life was at risk and said he would file an application to the DIG (Operations) on Monday (today) in this regard.

He said that he was detained in the US once on November 11, 2001 for two months and then on January 15, 2002 for a month, because he was mistaken as a suspect in the World Trade Centre bombing on September 11, 2001.

He said that in the detention he was subjected to the worst possible torture. The charges, he said, were later dropped and he was released. He filed a law suit against the then US president, George W Bush, and the FBI for keeping him in illegal detention on false charges of terrorism. In the case, he said, he had demanded $165 trillion as compensation.

Even after his release, he said, he was followed on various occasions both in the US, which made him feel insecure and so he moved back to Pakistan in 2006. The US agencies also stopped him at the airport in the US for interrogation, he claimed.

He said that there were chances Davis had come to kill him or keep him away from further proceeding the case.

He said that on January 27, when he was headed to his car mechanic near Qurtaba Chowk, he felt he was being followed by a white Land Cruiser with tinted windows. He said just before he reached the mechanic’s shop, while he was in front of the Khalid Book Depo on Ferozepur Road, he saw the white civic of Raymond Davis escaping after the shooting.

Dr Bhutta said that it was not a coincidence that the killing happened right in frontof the mechanic’s shop.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 21^st, 2011.

Raymond Davis, an American “Tweetie Bird”

About a year ago Gordon Duff and Jeff Gates, both associated with the Veterans Today website, and both well-connected with the Pentagon and the Pakistani military, visited the border area of Afghanistan and Pakistan in the company of top Pakistani army officers. They heard the complaints and saw the evidence that the US, Israel and India had secretly created and were arming and nurturing the so-called Pakistani Taliban (TTP — Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan) insurgency.

Duff and Gates noticed that a great many of the supposed aid projects that were claimed to be German were actually manned by Western and Israeli Jews. The Pakistanis couldn’t tell the difference, but these Americans obviously could. The private armies run by contractors such as Xe (the new name for Blackwater), it turns out, are under Zionist control. The effort to break up nuclear-armed Muslim Pakistan is most of all a Zionist project.

As Christopher Bollyn has pointed out, the main aim of the American war effort in Afghanistan, brought about by the Zionist-engineered 9/11 event, is for the benefit of ostensibly Israeli-owned (and ultimately Rothschild-et -al-controlled and -owned) gas, mineral and heroin interests in Central Asia.

The late Richard “Holbrooke” (hiding behind an olde Englishe name his father was not born to) turns out to have been a relative of the Rothschilds. And his replacement is one Mr Grossman, who will no doubt prove to link to the same networks. The Raymond Davis incident points to the unhinging of American, really Zionist, empire, in this zone as much as in the Arab world.

Since Obama and Hilary are, like 99% of American politicians, totally the creatures of Zionists, it comes as no surprise that they are going all out to try to keep a lid on this incident. Both have put their prestige on the line in support of the absurd claim that Davis must be given diplomatic immunity under the Vienna conventions. The State Department conveyed through an American TV channel a threat to expel the Pakistani ambassador. Now they are threatening to cut off US aid.

It’s not working.

America does have the support of Pakistani president Zardari — no wonder: they probably helped him murder his wife to make a claim for the presidency, and they helped get all the cases against him dropped so that the Swiss would release his massive accounts. Zardari has sacked — thus making a hero of — the foreign minister for opposing the release of Davis.

But there is not that much more within his power to do. If he did get close to getting Davis freed, the army would once more take over the country. Meanwhile, with or without the help of the latest American / Israeli torture technology, Davis is reported to be singing like Tweetie.


By Dr. Zaidi for Veterans Today

Davis may also face espionage charge

By Qaiser Butt

Published: February 9, 2011

Pakistani police escort arrested US national Raymond Davis (C) to a court in Lahore. PHOTO: AFP/FILE

ISLAMABAD: In an interesting twist to the  Lahore double murder involving a US ‘diplomatic official’, prosecutors have recommended that an espionage case be also registered against him, sources said on Tuesday.

Raymond Davis is already facing charges for killing two Pakistani motorcyclists in a busy marketplace of Lahore on January 27.

“Keeping in view the nature of the case it is strongly recommended that a case of espionage be registered against Davis,” the prosecution branch of the Punjab police has written in an official letter to the investigation branch.

“During the course of investigation, police retrieved photographs of some sensitive areas and defence installations from Davis’ camera,” a source told The Express Tribune requesting anonymity. “Photos of the strategic Balahisar Fort, the headquarters of the paramilitary Frontier Corps in Peshawar and of Pakistan Army’s bunkers on the Eastern border with India were found in the camera,” the source added.

The police had recovered a digital camera, a Glock pistol and a phone tracker along with a charger from Davis after his arrest. The Punjab government considers Davis a security risk after the recovery of the photos of sensitive installations, said the source.

The Obama administration has been pressuring Pakistan to release Davis who, according to it, “is a member of the administrative and technical staff of the mission” and therefore enjoys diplomatic immunity under the Vienna Convention.

“But Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has told American diplomats that the matter is sub judice and only the Lahore High Court (LHC) would decide whether or not Davis was entitled to diplomatic immunity,” an official source told The Express Tribune.

Sharif made the statement at a recent meeting with the US diplomats who sought Davis’ immediate release.

Citing a letter written by Interior Minister Rehman Malik to the Punjab government, the diplomats said that Davis had diplomatic immunity.

Sharif, however, denied his government had received any letter from the interior minister, according to the sources. Sharif advised the diplomats to wait for the LHC ruling on the diplomatic status of Davis.

A security official told The Express Tribune that Davis’ name did not figure on a list of US diplomats presented by the American embassy to the ministry of foreign affairs on Jan 25. But interestingly, his name figured prominently on another list submitted by the embassy to the ministry on Jan 28.

Diplomatic source told The Express Tribune that the foreign ministry’s viewpoint would be presented before the LHC whenever asked by the court.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 9^th, 2011.