Raymond Davis, America and justice

In the eyes of Pakistanis, Raymond Davis is a murderer and should be punished accordingly.

The visit by John Kerry to Pakistan to try and resolve the diplomatic row involving the status of Raymond Davis has raised more questions than answers. While Senator Kerry has made repeated references to the fact that Raymond Davis has diplomatic immunity, he has stopped short of calling him a diplomat and has referred to him as an administrative technical employee of the US embassy in Islamabad, who happens to have immunity.

And to validate this point of view, he has conveniently quoted the statements of Fauzia Wahab, then information secretary of the PPP, who said that Raymond Davis has diplomatic immunity. But Senator Kerry failed to acknowledge that the presidential spokesperson, Farhatullah Babar, disregarded Ms Wahab’s statement saying that this was her personal opinion and not that of the party or the president. In fact, her statement may have been the cause for her eventual replacement as the party’s spokesperson.

John Kerry then also quoted Interior Minister Rehman Malik, who had earlier stated that Raymond Davis had diplomatic immunity. But he very smoothly sidestepped the initial statements made by US consular officials, who were unable to clarify Raymond Davis’s status, saying they were errors and were now being rectified. But Kerry, probably, was not expecting that former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi would come out with a guarded, but strong, statement saying that Davis did not have “blanket immunity”.

This is embarrassing for the ruling PPP, and equally damning for the government is the silence on the part of the Foreign Office, which has so far failed to state whether it had any clear-cut stance on the status of Raymond Davis. It is an important question that remains unanswered. If Davis is indeed a diplomat, why does the Foreign Office have no record of him as such? It is perhaps to save itself from further embarrassment that the ruling party has finally put a gag order on its ministers, saying that only relevant ministers will be allowed to comment on the issue.

The other interesting angle is the involvement of US President Barack Obama in the case and his issuing a statement also saying that Raymond Davis had diplomatic immunity. It is highly unusual for the US president to get personally involved in a matter involving an apparently low-ranking employee of any US embassy.

Even the US Congress is asking interesting questions. For instance, if Raymond Davis is a diplomat, then why was he carrying weapons? And if he is indeed a diplomat then what was he doing in Pakistan’s border areas, taking photographs and carrying a GPS decoder? There are also reports that he posed as a convert and tried to establish links with banned outfits in Pakistan. Is the Pakistan government going to stay silent on this issue of a US ‘diplomat’ spying in Pakistan? And what about his combat experience in Afghanistan? I am quite sure that combat experience is not among the requirements for becoming a diplomat. Neither is skill in the use of arms, nor is undercover work. All of these, however, are requirements if one wants to join the ranks of counter-intelligence and espionage.

The veiled threats given by John Kerry that he didn’t want this issue to cause the broader spectrum of Pakistan-US ties to suffer should not go unnoticed. Nor should the fact that the entire US administration has come into motion to try and extricate Davis. Is it just a responsible government showing concern for a citizen, or is there something else here that is not evident? Why is this man so important? Is it something he knows? The US government is quoting diplomatic immunity while stressing that it respects the rule of law. Let’s look beyond Raymond Davis for just a second. Is the driver of the other vehicle, which ran over a motorcycle rider while trying to save Davis, also a diplomat? Why has he not been handed over for prosecution under local law?

The US has always maintained the stance that it stands for the rule of law and for democracy, and for the sovereignty of nations. Yet it is unwilling to let the law take its course in Pakistan. Kerry said that the US could very well try Raymond Davis in the US, despite his purported diplomatic immunity, but is unwilling to accord the same respect to Pakistani courts. This is an obvious contradiction but not even close to the contradiction created by his statement that the US wanted a solution that would ensure justice for all parties involved in this ‘tragic’ incident. The obvious question in this case is that, in the eyes of the US, Raymond Davis is a diplomat and hence he is immune and should walk free. In the eyes of the US administration, this is justice. But in the eyes of Pakistan and the families that have been wronged, Raymond Davis is a murderer and should be punished accordingly. I fail to see how these two perceptions of justice which are poles apart can ever be reconciled.

The other point that needs to be made is that the US has, on certain occasions in the past, requested a waiver of diplomatic immunity, and has got it. For example, in 1977, a US diplomat killed an Australian government worker in a Canberra traffic accident. Claiming immunity, the diplomat was sent home without trial. However, when in 1997, a drunken Georgian diplomat killed a 16-year-old girl in New York with his reckless driving, the US requested a waiver from immunity for him and got it. In another incident in January 2003, the US State Department asked Pakistan to withdraw the diplomatic immunity of its permanent representative to the UN at the time, Munir Akram. This was done after New York City prosecutors sought to bring misdemeanour assault charges against him after he had a quarrel with his girlfriend, Marjiana Mihic. Ms Mihic claimed that the two had an argument and that Akram had hit her. The US State Department demanded the withdrawal of immunity, the Pakistanis invoked it.

If the US can ask for a waiver of immunity when it feels inclined to do so, and invokes it when it suits itself, why does it insist that blanket immunity be given to a person whose diplomatic status has not even been proven without a shadow of a doubt? That is just one more unanswered question. But until all these questions are answered, there can be no justice.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 21^st, 2011.