Raymond Davis, the 36-year –old American, who pushed the US-Pak relations to the brink, is a freeman and has been to Lahore The release in Lahore was dramatic and sudden on Wednesday March 16 evening. This development coincides with extension of ISI chief’s term by one more year.
The screenplay enacted in Lahore was written somewhere else and handed over to the players out in the open.
Punjab Minister for Law, Rana Sanaullah, while confirming the release, said ‘Punjab government has played no part in the release of Davis,’ Express Tribune reported on its web site.
The former Green Beret was arrested on Jan 27 after he opened fire on two locals and killed them in Lahore. He became an instant national obsession with cry for his hanging louder and shriller by the day.
Details on what prompted the release are sketchy with the Minister saying that the families of the victims ‘pardoned’ him and therefore the court released him. ‘The trial court first indicted him but the families later told the court that they have accepted the blood money and they have pardoned him’, Sanaullah said. The case was settled with blood money paid by the American.
Lawyers of the victims’ families claim the families were forcibly taken to Kot Lakhpat Jail by unidentified men and made to sign papers pardoning Davis.
The closing of the Davis case is the outcome of high level contacts between CIA and the Pak Army and CIA and ISI mostly in the Gulf region. A commentary in a leading Pakistani daily on Wednesday titled ‘Why we need America’ was the first tangible give away to the mellowed mood in Pak establishment and its efforts to roll back the anti-Americanism of the past two months Authored by a former envoy who also headed American and European divisions in the Foreign Ministry, M Saeed Khalid, the article said Raymond Davis affair affected a floundering partnership. It called for cooling off tensions.
There have been contacts between the CIA and Pakistan army and CIA and ISI at various levels and most of these meetings took place in the Gulf, far removed from the preying eyes of Pakistan media. And with the US on board, Pakistan government on Tuesday March 15 cleared the decks for the extension of ISI chief’s term by one more year.
Raymond Davis was outsourced by CIA the monitoring of LeT activities on its home turf. And his two victims are said to be the ISI sleuths shadowing him. But Davis became caught in the larger controversy that involved ISI chief Lt Gen Pasha who is facing a New York court summons in the 26/11 mayhem perpetrated by LeT.
