CAN monetary compensation buy
justice? The trail of “blood
money” paid in Pakistan last year, to wash away the killings carried out by
CIA agent Raymond Davis, would suggest that only more misery follows. This
week, the widow of one of Mr Davis’s victims was killed at home, allegedly by
her own father, who also murdered his wife.
In January
2011 Mr Davis, working under cover for the CIA, had gunned down two men who
were riding a motorbike on a busy road in the middle of Lahore, the country’s
second-biggest city. The event threw America’s
relations with Pakistan into a tailspin from which they have never
recovered. The killing of Osama bin Laden, a year ago, overshadowed the Davis
case in the foreign press, but it was not forgotten among ordinary Pakistanis.
Apparently
Mr Davis had thought the two men, who were reportedly armed, were about to
attack him. A former soldier with America’s special forces, who was secretly
tasked to the security detail for a group of CIA agents tracking a Pakistani
jihadi group, Mr Davis was seen to shoot the first of two the men through his
own car’s windscreen. He turned his Glock pistol to the other man and shot him
in the back as he was trying to flee.
It remains
unclear to this day whether the men, Faizan Haider and Mohammad Faheem, were
simple street robbers, or Pakistani intelligence agents or members of an
extremist group. Nor is it apparent whether Mr Davis was a trigger-happy Rambo,
or if the two men posed a genuine threat to his life. (A third man, a
bystander, was killed when a speeding U.S. diplomatic vehicle coming to the aid
of Mr Davis ran him down. His family seem to have got no compensation at all.)
A month
after the incident Mr Faheem’s widow, Shumaila, poisoned herself. In hospital
before she died, she said “I do not expect any justice from this government.”
What she wanted was “blood for blood…The way my husband was shot, his killer
should be shot in the same fashion”.
In the event
Mr Davis was jailed by the Pakistani authorities. There followed a furious row
between officials in Islamabad and Washington, where his superiors insisted
that their man had diplomatic immunity. Public opinion in Pakistan was
outraged, with mullahs and other nationalist rabble-rousers coming out on to
the streets. Imran Khan, a cricketer-turned-politician, threatened that he
would lead great masses out to protest if Mr Davis were let go.
Amid the
hysteria, a deal was stitched together covertly in March 2011. Suddenly Mr
Davis was free of the double-murder charge and on an aeroplane headed home. The
families of Messrs Haider and Faheem were handed 200m rupees (US$2.2m) under an
Islamic provision in the law which allows for “blood money” to be paid in lieu
of punishment for a crime. In official terms the Americans denied paying the
money, but no one believed a word of it.
That Mr
Davis’s freedom was bought using Islamic law left the fire-breathing mullahs
and their supporters with no argument against his release. Caught short, hardly
any of their followers turned out on the streets.
With their
share of the money, Faizan Haider’s in-laws, who were of very modest means,
moved into a big house in one of Lahore’s nicer neighbourhoods. But trouble
followed for the newly rich family. It seems that Mr Haider’s widow, Zohra,
wanted to get remarried. Her groom was to have been her cousin—the son of her
mother’s sister. Her mother, Nabeela, had encouraged the match. But her father,
Shahzad Butt, wouldn’t hear of it, reportedly because he did not want more
claimants to the family’s share of the loot.
This week,
witnesses say, Mr Butt shot his wife Nabeela inside the new family compound and
then chased his daughter down the street, killing her in turn. Now he’s on the
run.
Meanwhile,
over in the United States, 37-year-old Mr Davis is still attracting attention.
As if to inspire Schadenfreude in Pakistan, soon after Mr Davis got back
to the United States he ended up in an ugly brawl. The punch-up seems to have
been over a parking spot outside a bagel shop in a Denver suburb, where he
allegedly beat up another hungry driver. This week, Mr Davis pleaded not guilty
to assault charges. He faces a trial in September; if convicted, he could face
a mandatory sentence of five years in prison.
Pakistanis
will be hoping the bagel incident can bring down some punishment on Mr Davis,
even when a double-homicide didn’t. Banyan, for The Economist
No comments:
Post a Comment