Who is Raymond anyway? Raymond Alan Davis may or may not be his name. He is said to be employed by the American embassy as a security technician which could be true, or not. He may be in Pakistan on a valid visa, or not; he may have shot the boys in self defence, or maybe not. Is he telling the truth, are the Americans telling the truth, are the Pakistani witnesses telling the truth? And that other car that ran over another man, and got clean away: why was that car so close to Mr Davis, that he was able to call it to his aid right away? Is it normal for technicians to travel with such a degree of protection? And where is that car now? How was it able to make such an effective getaway?
With all these questions yet to be answered, who knows what really happened? I doubt we ever will, regardless of the outcome of this incident. Maybe fifty or so years later, some historian will piece together confidential letters and come up with the facts, such as that Davis was really an undercover spy for the American Trendsetters Journal, come to study Maulana Fazlur Rehmans turban.
Espionage is something that most countries indulge in. While it has been made into the stuff of thrilling Hollywood moves, the real thing is messier and the truth is often buried under secrecy.
Whatever the truth behind Davis, the fact remains that he has landed himself in a country where chaos rules. It has become increasingly common for justice in Pakistan to be overridden by mass hysteria, as seen in the cases of Aafia Siddiqui, Salmaan Taseer, and now Raymond Davis. The reason is a police that extracts confessions by force and a judiciary fraught with dissension and supported by lawyers prone to hooliganism. It is further fostered by public statements by everyone from police officials to senior members of government, issuing verdicts on a case while it is still sub judice, or even right after the event occurs.
People, having no recourse to justice have learnt to bypass all this, taking the law into their own hands and coming straight on to the streets, throwing the equivalent of a toddlers temper tantrum. Rabid and manipulative religious extremism means that incidents such as the above are twisted and distorted; everything is turned into a conspiracy, or into an Islam versus Kufr issue. It is difficult to determine for example how Aafia Siddiqui comes into this. Aside from the fact that each of these two separate cases is entitled to justice, where is the semblance between them?
If Dr Siddiqui as an American citizen is considered to be a threat to the US, she is subject to the laws of her adoptive country which may try her in a court of law. What is justice in her case is for her adoptive country to determine.
What is justice in the Davis case is yet to be determined, as are the facts.
The sight of people jumping, spittle flying, screaming emotional slogans is becoming sickeningly common, as is the sight of rabble rousing leaders who play on these emotions. Those whose job it is to give decisions in a given case have guns held to their head, afraid for their lives in case their decisions offend a rabid right wing, and understandably so.
According to e-Diplomatic, agents and members of their immediate families are immune from all criminal prosecution and most civil law suits. Administrative and technical staff members of embassies have a lower level of immunity. Consular officers serving in consulates throughout the country have an even lower level of immunity. Members of an embassy’s service staff and consular employees are immune only for acts performed as part of their official duties.
So if Davis is a diplomat, he enjoys a certain immunity, which it is possible for the home country to waive, depending on the gravity of the situation. If, however, he was threatened and feared for his life, he is innocent, and if so, we are using him as a tool with which to commit blackmail, to get Dr Aafia released.
If what Davis did was indeed a crime, and if he is not a diplomat, since the incident occurred on Pakistani soil, he naturally could face the music here. But how is one to know what the music is, unless the musicians are allowed to see, and play the score first?