Lahore police hunt Raymond Davis 'blood money' suspect

Editor's Note:  John Kerry traveled to Pakistan to negotiate Davis' release.  Kerry assured Pakistani authorities that Davis would see justice in the United States for his conduct in Pakistan.  Kerry lied.

BBC

Both victims were shot dead at close range.

Pakistani police have launched a murder hunt after the widow and mother-in-law of a man shot dead by CIA contractor Raymond Davis last year were killed.

Police suspect Zohra Haider's father of killing her and her mother.

It is thought he was upset at her plans to re-marry, fearing either dishonour or that he might lose out financially.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars were paid in "blood money" to the family to secure Mr Davis's release. His arrest seriously strained US-Pakistani ties.

Meanwhile, Mr Davis appeared in a US court on Monday and denied charges of assaulting a man in a row over a parking space. The assault allegedly happened in October outside a bagel shop in the city of Denver.

In March 2011 a court in Lahore freed Mr Davis after acquitting him of two counts of murder. He admitted shooting dead Faizan Haider and another man in January last year, but said he was acting in self-defence when they tried to rob him.

The acquittal came when relatives of the dead men pardoned him in court in return for receiving compensation estimated to be about 200 million rupees ($2.34m, £1.1m), known as "blood money".
Under Pakistani Sharia law, relatives of a murder victim can pardon the killer.

'Family argument'
 
Police say Zohra Haider's father, Shahzad Butt, killed her and his wife, Nabeela Bibi, either because he feared losing some of the "blood money" as a result of the re-marriage plans or because he disapproved of her new fiance who he felt might bring dishonour to the family's name.

Mr Davis faces a full trial for assault
in the US in September

Nabeela Bibi was shot in the family's new house, police say, while Zohra Haider was chased down the street by her father before being killed.

The killings apparently followed an argument about the re-marriage plans. The family bought the new house - in a middle class neighbourhood of Lahore - with "blood money" they received.

Police say Shahzad Butt escaped from the scene and is now an absconder from justice with criminal charges pending against him.

The US and Pakistan deliberated for nearly seven weeks as to whether Mr Davis had diplomatic immunity before the "blood money" was paid - leading to his release.

Although Washington has consistently denied paying it, many believe it was handed over through Pakistani intermediaries.

The incident seriously damaged already strained relations between the US and Pakistan - a relationship that further deteriorated months later when American special forces killed Osama Bin Laden in a covert raid in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad.

On Monday Mr Davis, 37, pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree felony assault, misdemeanour, disorderly conduct and fighting in public.

His trial date was set for September 2012 and he remains free on bail. He faces a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison if convicted.

Guantanamo documents name Pakistan ISI as al Qaeda associate

NewsDaily/Reuters
Chris Albritton

On the morning of 9/11, Joe Biden met with
General Mahmoud Ahmad,
who wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta prior
to 9/11 attacks.

ISLAMABAD, Apr. 25, 2011 (Reuters) — The U.S. military classified Pakistan's top spy agency as a terrorist support entity in 2007 and used association with it as a justification to detain prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, according to leaked documents published on Sunday that are sure to further alienate Pakistan.

One document (http://link.reuters.com/tyn29r), given to The New York Times, say detainees who associated with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate "may have provided support to al-Qaida or the Taliban, or engaged in hostilities against US or Coalition forces."

The ISI, along with al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah and Iranian intelligence, are among 32 groups on the list of "associated forces," which also includes Egypt's Islamic Jihad, headed by al Qaeda deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The document defines an "associate force" as "militant forces and organizations with which al-Qaida, the al-Qaida network, or the Taliban has an established working, supportive, or beneficiary relationship for the achievement of common goals."

The ISI said it had no comment.

The "JTF-GTMO Matrix of Threat Indicators for Enemy Combatants" likely dates from 2007 according to its classification code, and is part of a trove of 759 files on detainees held in Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. military prison in Cuba.

The secret documents were obtained by WikiLeaks and date from between 2002 and 2009, but they were made available to The New York Times from a separate source, the paper said.
They reveal that most of the 172 remaining prisoners have been rated as a "high risk" of posing a threat to the United States and its allies if released without adequate rehabilitation and supervision, the newspaper said.

The documents also show about a third of the 600 detainees already sent to other countries were also designated "high risk" before they were freed or passed to the custody of other governments, the Times said in its report late on Sunday.

SEAT-OF-THE-PANTS INTELLIGENCE GATHERING

The dossiers, prepared under the Bush administration, also show the seat-of-the-pants intelligence gathering in war zones that led to the incarcerations of innocent men for years in cases of mistaken identity or simple misfortune, the Times said.

The documents are largely silent about the use of the harsh interrogation tactics at Guantanamo that drew global condemnation, the newspaper reported.

The Times also said an Obama administration task force set up in January 2009 had reviewed the assessments and, in some cases, come to different conclusions. "Thus... the documents published by The Times may not represent the government's current views of detainees at Guantanamo."
WikiLeaks previously released classified Pentagon reports on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and 250,000 State Department cables. Bradley Manning, a 23-year-old U.S. soldier accused of leaking secret documents to WikiLeaks has been detained since May of last year.

Last week, the Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Pakistani media that the ISI had a "longstanding" relationship with the Haqqani Network which is allied to al Qaeda.

"Haqqani is supporting, funding, training fighters that are killing Americans and killing coalition partners. And I have a sacred obligation to do all I can to make sure that doesn't happen," Mullen told Pakistan's daily Dawn newspaper.

"So that's at the core -- it's not the only thing -- but that's at the core that I think is the most difficult part of the relationship," Mullen said.

Pakistan's powerful ISI has long been suspected of maintaining ties to the Haqqani network, cultivated during the 1980s when Jalaluddin Haqqani was a feared battlefield commander against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

U.S.-Pakistan ties have been strained this year by the case of CIA contractor Raymond Davis, who shot dead two Pakistanis in Lahore on January 27, as well as by tensions in Pakistan over U.S. drone strikes that have fanned anti-American sentiment.

Pakistan court rejects Davis' claim about diplomatic immunity

Times of India

LAHORE: In a setback to US efforts to seek early release of its national Raymond Davis arrested for a double murder, a Pakistani court today rejected his claim that he has diplomatic immunity and said it would go ahead with his trial.

During the last hearing of the case, 37-year-old Davis, a suspected CIA contractor, had filed an application in which he insisted that he had immunity.

Lawyers representing the families of the two men shot dead by Davis in Lahore in January and the prosecution counsel today presented their arguments during proceedings conducted behind closed doors at Kot Lakhpat Jail by Additional District and Sessions Judge Yousuf Aujla.

After hearing the arguments of defence and prosecution lawyers, Judge Aujla said no authentic document had been presented by Davis or the Pakistan government to show that the American national had diplomatic immunity.

The judge said a note provided by the US embassy was not sufficient to prove Davis' diplomatic status.

He rejected Davis' application claiming diplomatic immunity and said the court has the jurisdiction to go ahead with his trial.

When defence lawyers told the judge that they had not been provided all the documents related to the charges levelled against Davis, Aujla directed the prosecution to ensure this was done and adjourned the case till March 8.

Lawyers representing the families of the two men killed by Davis said they expected the court to formally indict Davis at the next hearing.

Davis was represented at today's hearing by three lawyers, including Zahid Hussain Bukhari, a former judge of the Lahore high court.