Davis murder trial to go ahead

Court says the CIA contractor failed to prove he has diplomatic immunity.

LAHORE:

An additional sessions judge on Thursday said that the murder trial of CIA contractor Raymond Davis will go ahead, despite the insistence of the US government that he has diplomatic immunity.

The court also extended Davis’ judicial remand till March 15 and directed the police to submit a challan of the case registered against the US official for carrying illegal weapons in the next hearing.

Judge Yousaf Aujla passed these judgments during the hearing of the murder case against Davis which took place amid tight security in Kot Lakhpat jail. The case was adjourned until March 8 and according to sources, the court is most likely to indict Davis in the next hearing, Express 24/7 reported.

Davis has claimed he acted in self-defence when he shot dead two men in a busy Lahore street in January. The issue of his claim to diplomatic immunity is pending before the Lahore High Court which is due to announce its ruling on March 14.

“The court passed an order today saying that he (Davis) had failed to produce any legitimate document proving his diplomatic immunity,” the lawyer representing the families of the two men shot by him, said Asad Manzoor Butt.

“The judge rejected his (Davis’s) immunity claim after a lot of debate,” Butt said.

His lawyer pleaded that he could not be prosecuted by this court because of the diplomatic immunity issue was pending in Lahore High Court, Butt said.

“The judge replied that the Lahore High Court had not barred him to proceed on the murder trial,” Butt said.

Zahid Bokhari, Davis’s lawyer, told AFP the judge had ordered the trial to continue because for the past one-and-a-half months no document had been produced in the court related to Davis’s immunity.

“We will see the detailed written order by the judge and then will be able to tell whether he had rejected the claim of diplomatic immunity or not,” Bokhari said.

“We have tried to stop this trial and asked for some documents related to this case from the court,” said Bokhari, who appeared for the first time on behalf of Davis.

This was the second time that media-persons were kept at bay from the trial proceedings. Only Carmela Conroy, US consul general in Lahore, was given permission to attend the proceedings.

At a previous hearing on February 25, Davis refused to sign the copy of the charge sheet, insisting that he be released and claiming that he enjoyed diplomatic immunity.

Meanwhile, Foreign Secretary Salman Basir told reporters in Islamabad that it would be premature to conclude that the issue had damaged Pakistan-US relations in any lasting sense.

“I think on the Davis issue, it is of course our responsibility to ensure that issues such as these do not cast a shadow on our bilateral relations,” he said, adding: “I believe that is also the case with the State Department”.

He said Pakistan was mindful of its international obligations as well as legal and constitutional responsibilities. With additional input from AFP

Published in The Express Tribune, March 4^th, 2011.