CIA contractor held for murder in Lahore

The US continues to press Pakistan for accused murdered CIA contractor Raymond Davis holds diplomatic immunity; Pakistan however has no records of him in diplomatic documentation.

The American was a CIA contractor working on assignment when he allegedly shot and killed two men who were allegedly Pakistani intelligence officers in a car when he opened fire on them at a stop light. Pakistani authorities have charged him with murder, but the Obama administration has insisted the act was in self-defense and that as a consulate official Davis has diplomatic immunity.Pakistan contested the diplomatic immunity claims, saying they have no record of his name on diplomatic documents which would have been provided by the US government in advance. Scott Horton, a contributing editor to Harper's Magazine said the accounts in Pakistan show Davis was not a diplomat and deserves no immunity under diplomatic accords. “He was a CIA contractor, probably the acting CIA station chief in Lahore, Pakistan,” he said.The accounts between the US and Pakistan there are two very different accounts of the incident and of who Davis is. The details reveled in Pakistan show Davis was traveling with multiple identities, a number of weapons and other materials witch pointed to him being a spy – not a diplomat. “After the fact, we had The New York Time acknowledge that yes they knew all along that he was a spy but they didn’t print this information because the CIA asked them not to print it,” Horton added. Basically, he explained, the New York Times printed false or highly misleading information about the story.“They were misleading their readers,” he remarked. “They only got around to correcting that much later, two or three weeks later. And of course, most readers had already formed their opinion early on.”Many argued the paper held the information based on a sense of patriotic duty. Horton argued however that misleading readers is in no way patriotic. The US has continued to try and release Davis in order to bring him back to the US, beyond the reach of Pakistani courts, attempting to argue immunity after earlier attempts to extract him failed. “It’s very clear they [Davis] are not diplomats,” Horton said.