U.S. official kills 2 gunmen in Pakistan

[daftandbarmy]

Wow, the media is just full of feel good stories these days. Well done Yank!

U.S. official kills 2 gunmen in Pakistan

LAHORE, Pakistan — A U.S. consular employee shot and killed two gunmen as they approached his vehicle in a congested street in Pakistan on Thursday, police said. A pedestrian was also killed by a speeding American car trying to help, an officer said.

The U.S. Embassy said an American employee was involved in the incident in Lahore, but could not confirm details.
Police officer Umar Saeed said the men were suspected robbers, but provided no evidence to back up the statement. He said the American, who was not identified, shot at the men in self-defence.

Western diplomats travel with armed guards in many parts of Pakistan because of the risk of militant attack. Lahore has seen frequent terrorist bombings and shootings over the last two years, though the city's small expatriate population has not been directly targeted.

Lahore police chief Aslam Tareen said the American was being questioned by the police and may be charged with both murder and illegally carrying a weapon: a Beretta pistol. The American shot both men after they pointed guns at him at an intersection, Tareen said.

"Diplomatic staff usually enjoy a certain type of immunity, but I am not sure about murder," he said. "We will consult the Foreign Office and legal advisers in this regard."

The gunmen approached the American's vehicle on a motorbike, said Saeed, the police officer. The American managed to alert colleagues in a car behind him who hit and killed a passer-by as they rushed to the scene, he said.
Local TV showed footage of what it said was the American's car, which had several bullet holes in the front windshield. It also showed one of the gunmen laying dead next to a motorbike with a pistol on the ground nearby. The other gunman was shown being placed in the back of an ambulance and appeared to be wearing a holster.

In the northwestern city of Peshawar in 2008, gunmen shot and killed an American aid worker as he drove to work. Suspected militants also opened fire on the vehicle of the United States' top diplomat in the city the same year, but she survived the attack.

Street robberies are not uncommon in Pakistan, and foreigners would be perceived as lucrative targets in the poor country.

Lahore is a city of 12 million people in eastern Pakistan not far from the Indian border. The United States has a small diplomatic mission there.

While the facts of the incident are still being established, it may add to anti-American rhetoric in the country.
A few dozen people protested outside the police station where the American was being held. They burnt tires and one of them held up a sign saying "American dog."

Sections of the Pakistani media are prone to fanning right-wing conspiracy theories that frequently feature armed foreigners roaming the country at will, violating its sovereignty. The United States is pumping millions of dollars in aid to the country, but many people still regard it with suspicion or outright enmity

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/World/20110127/us-consular-staffer-shoots-two-gunmen-in-pakistan-110127/

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Too bad he couldn't have made it to the embassy after the incident.

 

[George Wallace]

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.

Terrorism & Security


Pakistan court extends detention of US embassy official

By Tom A. Peter, Correspondent / February 3, 2011 
The Christian Science Monitor


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A Pakistan court is continuing to hold US official Raymond Davis, who is accused of killing two Pakistani men. Some Pakistanis are now calling for him to be tried on terror charges.

Pakistani authorities have extended the detention of a US consulate employee who is accused of killing two Pakistani men. He claims he shot the two men, who were trying to rob him, in self-defense.

A third man was killed when a US consular vehicle ran him over as it came to the aid of the employee, Raymond Davis.

The incident has heightened tensions in Pakistan, where anti-American sentiments run deep due in no small part to US drone strikes in the tribal areas, the war in Afghanistan, and the government’s alliance with the US. American officials say that Mr. Davis has diplomatic immunity and should be released.

Davis has admitted to shooting the two motorcyclists in Lahore, but says they were armed and threatened him. The US embassy in Islamabad has backed Davis’s version of events, but Pakistani authorities say they need more time to conduct investigations, reports the BBC. Pakistani authorities are charging Davis with murder and possession of an illegal weapon. They say that Davis is not on the list of US officials authorized to carry a gun in the country.

According to the US embassy, the two men Davis shot have a criminal history and had robbed someone else moments before approaching Davis, reports CNN. Police found pistols and several magazines on the bodies of the two Pakistani men. Davis, for his part, was reportedly carrying a Glock pistol and four loaded magazines.

“The diplomat acted in self-defense when confronted by two armed men on motorcycles,” said the US embassy. “The diplomat had every reason to believe that the armed men meant him bodily harm.”

Although US officials say Davis is entitled to diplomatic immunity, Pakistani officials say that Davis has not adequately proved it, reports Xinhua. His name has been placed on the exit control list to stop him from leaving the country and Pakistani authorities will hold him in prison for at least another eight days.

Some Pakistanis are advocating that Davis be tried on terror charges, alleging that he shot two innocent people. Advocate Rana Ilmuddin Ghazi has filed a petition stating that Davis was not a diplomat and extending him immunity would be a “violation of all international conventions,” reports the Daily Times. Mr. Ghazi pushed to provide no leniency for Davis.

Meanwhile, another article in the Daily Times reports that the families of the Pakistanis shot by Davis are not satisfied with the investigations into the incident. The relatives claim that they were asked to forgive Davis or face “dire consequences.” The relatives held a press conference on Wednesday in which they urged the government to try Davis using anti-terror laws. Protestors gathered at the event chanting slogans like “hang Davis.”

Still there remains some hope that Davis could be released. Interior Minister Rehman Malik has confirmed that the consular employee holds a diplomatic passport. Mr. Malik also urged the media to avoid “hyped” coverage that distorts the facts, reports Agence France-Presse.

“The file is with me and whenever the high court needs this file, the file will be presented to the court,” he said. “Don't do misreporting based on presumptions, let's not hype [the issue]. We will provide whatever information the court requires.”

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[Burrows]

Killing two armed thugs is clearly an act of terrorism.  I bet he's been a sleeper all along.  :

 

[George Wallace]

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.

USA / Foreign Policy

New jam in US, Pakistan relations: American accused of double murder

By Howard LaFranchi, Staff writer / February 8, 2011 
The Christian Science Monitor


LINK

The US insists the American enjoys diplomatic immunity, but Pakistan won't release him. Hanging in the balance is a summit later this month with leaders from the US, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

Washington

With a Washington summit later this month hanging in the balance, the United States has suspended high-level contacts with Pakistan’s beleaguered civilian government over Pakistan’s refusal to release a US diplomat accused of double murder.

The US insists the American, Raymond Davis, enjoys diplomatic immunity and has been wrongfully detained since he allegedly shot two motorcyclists tailing him in Lahore on Jan. 27. Pakistani officials have questioned Mr. Davis’s diplomatic status.

US-Pakistan bilateral relations are rarely trouble-free, but the diplomatic row comes at a time when Pakistan’s already-high anti-Americanism is rising further. It’s also happening as the weak civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari is buffeted by new signs of public support for the country’s Islamist radicals.

Failure to resolve the standoff soon could put off a crucial summit scheduled for the end of the month in Washington that is supposed to bring together US, Pakistani, and Afghan leaders as a show of coordination on the war in Afghanistan and counterterrorism efforts more broadly.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton addressed the issue of Davis’s detention with Pakistan’s Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, at a security conference over the weekend in Munich, Germany. She also raised the issue in a telephone conversation with President Zardari last week. But she reportedly canceled a meeting at the Munich conference with Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi.

Publicly, the State Department denies any slowdown in high-level contacts, even while emphasizing the impact on bilateral relations that any continued detention of Davis could have.

“We continue to have contacts with the Pakistani government,” said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley at a press briefing Monday. “We continue to express to them the importance of resolving this. And we continue to express to them the fact that our US diplomat has diplomatic immunity and should be released.”

The US ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, met with Zardari Monday and conveyed the US message, Mr. Crowley said.

The turn for the worse in US-Pakistan relations comes even as a new US government study finds that a substantial civilian-development assistance program, approved by the US for Pakistan in 2009, is failing to achieve its goals.

A report released jointly this week by the State Department, the Defense Department, and the Office of Inspector General for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) found that the five-year, $7.5 billion assistance package “has not been able to demonstrate measurable progress” toward the goal of stabilizing Pakistan and furthering its development.

The report faults USAID for failing to provide the information necessary to make a full evaluation of the program’s impact so far. But it also recognizes that conditions in Pakistan have hampered US efforts to get its development experts out into the field.

USAID is having trouble recruiting the staff it needs to run the aid program, the report found.

The specifics of the Davis case may have little to do with the conditions encountered by the average US aid worker. But some US officials have said that a failure to win Davis’s release soon could not help but have a chilling effect on efforts to recruit the staff needed to implement such a substantial aid program.

The $1.5 billion in annual development assistance makes Pakistan the second-largest recipient of such US aid after Afghanistan.

The State Department says that Davis is part of the “technical and administrative staff” of the US embassy in Islamabad and that as the holder of a diplomatic passport, he is entitled to “full criminal immunity in accordance with the Vienna Convention.”

The US, Mr. Crowley says, stands by its version of events: that Davis was assaulted by motorcycle-mounted robbers and fired in self-defense. The Pakistani press reports that the two men Davis is charged with killing were actually agents of Pakistan’s intelligence service, ISI, who were assigned to tail Davis.

“We don’t find them credible,” Crowley said of those reports.

The Pakistani government is wrestling with the repercussions it could incur domestically if it intervened in a provincial court on behalf of an American, in particular one accused of killing two Pakistanis.

A hint of the uproar it would meet came this week after the widow of one of the two men killed in Lahore committed suicide. The Pakistani press has been filled with reports that the widow told a doctor she swallowed rat poison because she could not bear the thought that Davis could be set free without facing Pakistani justice.

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