Pakistan Jails U.S. Consular Worker Over Shooting deaths

A delegation of visiting U.S. Congress members has threatened to cut aid to Pakistan unless it releases a U.S. citizen jailed over the shooting deaths of two Pakistanis. Raymond Allen Davis, an employee of the U.S. consulate, admitted to fatally shooting two people he said threatened him while he was driving in Lahore last month. A third Pakistani was reportedly run over and killed by a U.S. consulate vehicle that arrived at the scene. Last weekend, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton canceled a meeting with Pakistan’s foreign minister to protest Davis’s detention. The State Department says Davis holds a diplomatic passport and is entitled to full criminal immunity. The Obama administration has demanded his immediate release. On Tuesday, CounterPunch.org released a number of revelations questioning Davis’s role at the consulate. Davis and the U.S. embassy have claimed that he was hired as an employee of Hyperion Protective Consultants, a Florida-based security firm. But an article posted on CounterPunch says no such company has been located at the given address, and the Florida Secretary of State office has no record of a Hyperion Protective Consultants. Pakistani journalists have speculated Davis is a CIA agent or a private contractor working for a mercenary firm. According to CounterPunch, U.S. officials failed to report Davis was driving a rental car rather than an embassy vehicle and possessed two handguns, a substantial amount of ammunition, three cell phones and a telescope. The incident has sparked massive protests in Pakistan. The wife of one of the victims committed suicide on Sunday

A history of tragedy and farce

It was Karl Marx who said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.

I have never really been sure what he meant. But as the recent history of US-Pakistan relations churns onward through multiple repetitive cycles, the results, while perhaps verging at times on black farce, have been clearly and consistently tragic. More tragic still, history seems poised to deliver yet more of the same.

US to Announce $2 Billion in Military Aid for Pakistan

The Obama administration is expected to announce a $2 billion military package for Pakistan when the US and Pakistan hold high-level talks later this week. Pakistan’s military will use the money to buy US-made helicopters, weapons systems and equipment to intercept communications. The aid also includes more counterinsurgency assistance and a program that will allow members of Pakistan’s military to study at American war colleges. Meanwhile, Pakistanis continue to be devastated by the floods that have swept across Pakistan affecting nearly 20 million people. The UN’s $2 billion aid appeal for the floods, which was launched nearly a month ago, remains only 34 percent funded.

Pakistani Scientist Sentenced to 86 Years in US Prison

A US judge has sentenced Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui to eighty-six years in prison for shooting at her American interrogators while in detention in Afghanistan. Her conviction and sentencing has been widely criticized in Pakistan, where Siddiqui is believed to have been innocent and mistreated in US detention. US authorities said Siddiqui was arrested in July 2008 by Afghan police, but many human rights groups have alleged that Siddiqui was forcibly disappeared by Pakistani authorities in 2003 and interrogated and tortured at the behest of the United States. In her testimony, Siddiqui claimed to have been held in a US secret prison. In Pakistan, Aafia Siddiqui’s sister Fauzia criticized the eighty-six-year sentence.

Fauzia Siddiqui: "We had no better expectations from this judge. I mean, anything less than a hundred would be clemency on his part, I would say. He has proven—he has proven today to the whole world that the American justice system, the American justice system that America used to pride on, no longer exists."

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Pakistan, Afghanistan begin talks about dealing with insurgents

By Karin Brulliard and Karen DeYoung
Saturday, June 19, 2010; A01


ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN -- Afghanistan and Pakistan are talking about how to make peace with insurgents fighting U.S. troops in Afghanistan, including one faction considered the coalition forces' most lethal foe, according to Pakistani and U.S. officials.