Davis case fueling anger across Pakistan

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/167561.html

Anti-US protests are raging across Pakistan following the murder of two Pakistanis by a US national in late January.

People from all walks of life have staged protests almost every day since then to put pressure on the government to punish Raymon Davis who killed two Pakistani citizens on a busy road in the eastern city of Lahore.

His case has also sparked a bitter diplomatic row between Washington and Islamabad. The US claims he is an embassy official; while other sources say he is a CIA contractor.

Legal experts believe Davis may be given either life sentence or death punishment amid rising anti-US sentiments never seen before in Pakistan. They say this was the specific reason that former Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi lost his job and is now attracting tens of thousands of people rallying around anti-US sentiments in Pakistan.

Many here are furious that the US has urged Pakistan to release Raymond Davis. The official records reportedly dispatched by the US embassy to Pakistan's Foreign Ministry a day before the incident, shows that Davis was not even registered with the government as a non-diplomatic member of the embassy .

Despite the rising public anger, the US remains engaged in what appears to be an offensive diplomacy putting tremendous pressure on Islamabad to secure the release of Davis without prosecution.

Washington has threatened to oust the Pakistani ambassador and close down US consulates in Pakistan if Islamabad did not immediately free him

With 47 eyewitness accounts, Davis is being prosecuted in the court after police concluded that he killed the two citizens not in self-defense.