Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper reports on the freeing of CIA contractor Raymond Davis, who was being held in Pakistan on murder charges. Davis said that he acted in self-defense. The report:
ISLAMABAD: A Pakistan court on Wednesday freed CIA contractor Raymond Davis, who was accused of murdering two men in Lahore, after blood money was paid in accordance with sharia law, the Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah said.
“The family members of the slain men appeared in the court and independently verified they had pardoned him (Davis),” provincial law minister Rana Sanaullah told a private television.
“He has been released from jail. Now it is up to him. He can go wherever he wants,” he added.
The lawyer representing the victims, Asad Manzoor Butt, said he was not allowed to appear for the hearing. The lawyer alleged that Davis possibly escaped from the prison with the consent of the authorities, DawnNews reported.
The lawyer further claimed that he was kept in unlawful confinement, according to DawnNews.
PML-N spokesman Pervez Rasheed the Punjab government was not involved in the release of Davis, DawnNews reported.
Moreover, Ayesha, the sister of Shumaila Kanwal, the wife of victim Faheem Ahmed, said “we are not aware of any such settlement and we did not opt for any…we want justice.”
“They confined us in the jail for four hours and did not allow us to take part in the court proceedings. We were not allowed to leave the prison,” one of the lawyers, Asad Manzoor Butt, told AFP.
Butt said the families of the men had agreed with authorities to accept blood money over the deaths the previous night.
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