Report: Accused Killer Raymond Davis Was CIA Spy in Pakistan
Feb 21, 2011 – 12:18 PM
It started out suspiciously: An all-American-looking man in a plaid shirt and jeans pulled a Glock pistol on two motorcyclists last month in Pakistan, police said, shooting them dead in the street in broad daylight.Initial reports had Raymond Davis firing his gun in self-defense during a robbery attempt. But then police searched his car and found multiple guns, cell phones, infrared lights and survival gear.
Meanwhile, a U.S. diplomatic car racing to the scene crashed and killed another Pakistani man en route. Then the widow of one of the men committed suicide.
Hamza Ahmed, APPakistani security officials escort Raymond Allen Davis, center, to a local court in Lahore on Jan. 28.The plot had thickened.Now it turns out that Davis, who has been at the center of a diplomatic row between the U.S. and Pakistan, was a CIA agent, according to a government official quoted today in The New York Times.
That could complicate Washington's efforts to get him freed. The U.S. consulate in Lahore, where the shootings took place on a busy thoroughfare on Jan. 27, has been insisting that Davis was a civilian employee with diplomatic immunity. Even President Barack Obama entered the fray, referring to Davis in a speech last week as "our diplomat in Pakistan."
Diplomats are entitled to immunity from local prosecution under the Vienna Conventions. But Davis was driving around Pakistan in a car with local license plates, without informing local authorities -- something that is required out of concern for diplomats' safety. His suspicious circumstances have raised questions about whether the U.S. lied about his real job in Pakistan. American officials have refused to comment about whether Davis is a spy.
The 36-year-old is a former Special Forces soldier who left the U.S. military in 2003. Since then he claims to have been working for a security firm called Hyperion LLC, under a contract with the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan. But the BBC reported that Hyperion exists only as a website, and its offices in Florida have been vacant for several years -- raising questions about whether it could be a front for the CIA.
"It's beyond a shadow of a doubt," an unnamed senior Pakistani intelligence official told The Guardian about Davis' suspected CIA link.
Pakistani police said that after reviewing details of the Lahore shootings, they're certain Davis didn't fire out of self-defense. Prosecutors have charged Davis with murder and allege that he fired 10 shots, even getting out of his car to shoot one of the men twice in the back as he fled. The man's body was found 30 feet from his motorcycle.
"It went way beyond what we define as self-defense. It was not commensurate with the threat," a senior police official told The Guardian.
Now Raymond Davis has become a household name in Pakistan, reviled as a symbol of allegedly dangerous U.S. meddling in the country, and of the double-standard diplomatic immunity allows for foreign emissaries who violate local laws. His name has been sprawled across banners in crowds of angry Pakistanis taking to the streets to protest his alleged murders, demanding justice for the victims. An effigy of Davis was burned in Karachi.
Last week, a Pakistani judge delayed a hearing on Davis' case for another three weeks, after Pakistan's foreign ministry asked for more time to figure out whether he has diplomatic immunity. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., a major backer of the $3 billion the U.S. gives Pakistan each year in aid, also flew to Islamabad last week to argue that Davis be freed.
The question of whether that will happen hinges on Davis' specific diplomatic status. Those who want to see Davis tried for murder have seized on a discrepancy in diplomatic notes sent from the U.S. Embassy to Pakistan's Foreign Ministry.
According to The Washington Post, the first note, dated Jan. 27, described Davis as "an employee of U.S. Consulate General Lahore and holder of a diplomatic passport." But a second note, on Feb. 3, described him as a member of the "administrative and technical staff" of the U.S. Embassy. That different phrasing could indicate different levels of diplomatic immunity.
Davis is not the first diplomat accused of committing murder while on a foreign posting. In 1982, the son of the Brazilian ambassador to the U.S. shot and wounded a bouncer at a Washington nightclub and escaped prosecution because of diplomatic immunity. But in 1997, Georgian officials waived diplomatic immunity for the No. 2 official at the Georgian Embassy in Washington, after the man killed a teenage girl in a drunken-driving incident. He was prosecuted and convicted of manslaughter.
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US gives fresh details of CIA agent who killed two men in Pakistan shootout
US reveals that CIA agent Raymond Davis worked for private security firm Xe, formerly known as Blackwate
Ewen MacAskill and Declan Walsh
guardian.co.uk, Monday 21 February 2011 21.48 GMT
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
>via: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/21/raymond-davis-pakistan-cia-blackw...
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FEBRUARY 21, 2011
U.S. Media Knew Raymond Davis is CIA, ex-Blackwater
US officials have provided fresh details about Raymond Davis, the CIA agent at the center 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 familiarizing 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...Other U.S. officials continue to deny Davis’s role in the CIA: "Davis is a protective officer, someone who provides security to U.S. officials in Pakistan. Rumors to the contrary are simply wrong."
>via: http://hadalzone.blogspot.com/2011/02/us-media-knew-raymond-davis-is-spy.html
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CIA May 'Shut Up' Davis By Killing Him: Lahore jailers
Jaul authorities fear 'Davis' may be killed by American to shut him up. Image via Wikipedia
Pakistan has never arrested an American mercenary before, so there is a learning curve. Islamabad has increased the security around the USnational “Raymond Davis”. Fearing that the high-profile prisoner may be killed the Pakistani Police, Intelligence, Civilian and Military authorities have taken a few extraordinary security measures to protect Davis. They have also planned to keep Davis at some distance from the U.S. officials visiting him. The ajil authorities decided to disallow physical contact between Davis and U.S. officials, who visit him. “Davis’ visitors would now be allowed to interact with him from across a glass wall, as it happens in the West and the United States. There is apprehensions about a possible attempt on “Davis” life. Some suspect that the Americans could take “Davis” out because he knows too much. The Russian Agencies have him identified as part of the CIA Task Force with deep links to the terrorists.
According to news reports emanating from Pakistan the new security measures include limiting physical contact between Davis and the U.S. officials and diplomats. According to officials a directive has been issued to strictly check the food provided to the American killer. Outside food will not be allowed to be given to the CIA mercenary. According to a new report “A food committee has been constituted, which would ensure that he is not provided poisoned food in the jail.” According to the pres reports “Even chocolates, brought by the U.S. officials, would not be provided to Davis.” Surveillance cameras had also been installed zeroing in on Davis in the Kot Lakhpat Jail.
“Davis”, despite being a lowly technical assistant, has the kind of importance that U.S. President Barack Obama had to ask for his early release and an influential Senator John Kerry rushed to Pakistan to try to take him back to the U.S.. It snot often that Pakistan arrests a diplomat, especially one carrying a customized Block Pistol which uses an illegal bore.
Police in Lahore arrested “Raymond Davis” after he shot dead two Pakistanis on Jan. 27. He shot the kids in the back (shooting them through the front windshield of his vehicle) and then got out of his vehicle walked over the injured cyclists and then pumped five bullets into each young man. Davis claimed that he killed them in self defense because they were trying to rob him. Davis was in his colossal bullet-proof SUV, they were on puny 70 cc motorbikes. How could they rob him?
The U.S. government demanded the urgent release of Davis with conflicting statements about his status. The case is still in the Lahore High Court which has placed Davis’ name in the exit control list. The court has directed the Pakistani government to decide within 15 days that whether Davis is a diplomat or not. The Court has also directed the Police to find the other murderer.
The key document governing diplomatic immunity is the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, specifically articles 29, 31, 37, and 39. :
Article 29: A diplomatic agent “shall not be liable to any form of arrest or detention.”
It is obvious that Mr. “Davis” was not a diplomat. Pakistan Law requires the diplomat be identified as such and that his name be submitted to the Pakistani Foreign Office which has the option of approving the diplomatic immunity or not. Mr. Davis’s name was not on the list of US diplomats on the day of the accident. The US Embassy tried to submit his name the next day
According to Brig (Retd) Shaukat Qadir “On January 25th 2011, just two days before Davis shot and killed the two young Pakistanis, the US Embassy submitted a list of its diplomatic and non-diplomatic staff in Pakistan to the Pakistani Foreign Office (FO), as all foreign nations are required to do annually. The list included 48 names. Raymond Davis was not on the list. The day after Davis shot and killed the two Pakistanis, the US Embassy suddenly submitted a “revised” list to the Foreign Office which added Davis’ name!
When Pakistani police took Davis into custody on January 27th, he had on his person an ordinary American passport with a valid ordinary Pakistan visa, issued by the Pakistan Embassy in Washington. On January 28th, a member of the US Consulate wanted the Pakistani police to exchange that passport in Davis’ possession with another one. The fresh passport being offered was a diplomatic passport with a valid diplomatic visa dated sometime in 2009. This visa was stamped in Islamabad by the FO!”
It gets ridiculously funnier. The prosecutor representing the Punjab government has presented two letters from the US Embassy as evidence before the Lahore High Court, forwarded to the Punjab government through the FO. The first letter, dated January 27, reads: “Davis is an employee of the US Consulate General Lahore and holder of a diplomatic passport.” The second, dated February 3rd, states that Davis is a member of the “administrative and technical staff of the US Embassy Islamabad!” Just how gullible do the Americans take Pakistanis to be!
The Washington Post admits that “The U.S. embassy 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 confirms that if his status had been accpeted “Davis” would have been covered by 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, and thus has a lesser form of immunity. Foreign Minsiter Mahmood Quresh clearly stated that “Davis” did not have blanket and universal immunity that the the US has claimed”
“But consular staff also enjoy immunity from the jurisdiction of the receiving state with respect to their consular functions.” Mr. “Davis” was not perfoming any Consular functions in Mozung Chungi.
Article 31:”A diplomatic agent shall enjoy immunity from the criminal jurisdiction of the receiving State,” with certain exceptions involving property and commercial activity.
Article 37: “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.
Article 39: “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.”
The Notification is missing in the case of Mr. “Davis”.
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 key words are in respect of acts PERFORMED IN THE EXERCISE OF HIS CONSULAR FUNCTIONS.” Mr. “Davis” while he was shooting two kids in the back (through the front windshield of his SUV) with an illegal Block pitol was obviously not performing his Consular functions. In fact there are no identifiable Consular Functions which Mr. “Davis” performed at any time. He was visitng places whic are no go areas and taking pictures of places which photography is prohibited.
Even the Washington Post admitted that “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”
>via: http://www.islamabadglobe.com/?p=31649