Can Sabika’s killer be tried in Pakistan?

For nine years, I have lived 10-minute drive away from Santa Fe Dimitrios Pagourtzis — the man who rekindled memories of APS terror, despite the fact that far fewer people were killed — who has been charged with capital murder and aggravated assault against a public servant. Had his name been Abdullah or Omar, he would have been charged with committing an act of terror. Pagourtzis in the days ahead would be hated as a psycho who committed hate crime, but not terror. American media seems to be operating in a perfect Orwellian manner, where the nature of the crime is labelled based on the religion of the criminal.

Pakistanis are deeply saddened by the tragic loss of Sabika Sheikh. She had proven to be remarkable. I asked a leading Pakistani journalist in a talk show if Pagourtzis could be brought to Pakistan to prosecute since he killed a Pakistani citizen and since Americans always like to demand extradition of anyone who has killed Americans in a foreign land. He quickly dismissed my point saying many non-Pakistanis were killed as well. The analyst claimed to have read my mind saying he knew my next move that I was going to connect this issue with the American diplomat Joseph Emanuel Hall who killed a biker in Islamabad recently. As soon as I said that that wasn’t the case, my phone was cut.

This is not related to diplomat Hall. This is not even about the inability to ask this question. This is about rather something worse: the inability to even think or contemplate this question. Enrique Camarena Salazar nicknamed ‘Kiki’ who was working for the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was murdered in Mexico. It prompted a swift reaction from the DEA, which launched Operation Leyenda, the largest DEA homicide investigation ever undertaken. Kiki was an American citizen. Investigators were soon able to identify Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo and his two close associates, Rafael Caro Quintero and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, as the primary suspects in the kidnapping of Kiki.

The DEA was facing difficulty in having Mexican citizens extradited to the US. However, that didn’t stop the DEA from detaining two suspects, Humberto Álvarez Machaín and Javier Vásquez Velasco, who were later taken to the United States by bounty hunters. Álvarez was brought to trial in Los Angeles in 1992, where the charges were dropped. The case went to the US Supreme Court where he was found not entitled to relief. That is not all. In 2013, two former federal agents and an ex-CIA contractor told an American television network that it was the CIA that actually murdered Camarena because he was becoming a threat to CIA drug operations in Mexico, which was financing the Nicaraguan Contra rebels.

If the criminal’s nationality is the factor that would determine that he be tried in his home country regardless of where he committed the crime, then Aimal Kasi and Ramzi Yousaf would have been extradited back to their countries. If the country where the crime was committed should be prosecuting the criminal then Raymond Davis should have been prosecuted in Pakistan. In the above example, the only thing that was American was the victim’s nationality. The place of the crime was Mexico and the criminal was Mexican if we give the benefit of doubt to the CIA. Likewise, in Sabika’s case, the only thing that’s Pakistani is the victim’s nationality. I wonder what factor would be cherry picked, nationality of the criminal, that of the victim or the place of crime if someone dared to ask this question?

Published in The Express Tribune, May 24^th, 2018.

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