RAW paid Raymond Davis to write anti-Pakistan book, says PPP leader
islamabad — Terming CIA contractor Raymond Davis’s book, The Contractor, a pack of lies, former interior minister Rehman Malik has claimed that India’s spy agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) had paid Davis to write the book in order to malign Pakistan’s army and democratic institutions, reports Dawn online.
Malik, who was interior minister in 2011 when Davis was acquitted of killing two people in Lahore, issued a detailed statement regarding so far undisclosed developments that had unfolded in the aftermath of Davis’s arrest.
Malik claimed that the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) government and the military establishment had decided not to release Davis till he was acquitted by a court of law. “A high-level meeting had decided that neither would Davis be deported nor would he be granted diplomatic immunity, and that we would wait for the decision of the court in the matter and no action would be taken through any executive order,” he said, adding that the name of Davis had been placed on the Exit Control List immediately.
He said that later in a meeting at the President House, the then Inter-Services Intelligence director general, Gen. Shuja Pasha, had told the political leadership that the Americans wanted to exercise the right of Diyat (blood money) under Islamic law. “The matter was dealt with the cooperation of the Punjab government, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Interior,” he said. Commenting on Davis’s claim regarding Gen. Pasha’s role in pushing for diplomatic immunity, Malik said: “No such role was played by the then ISI DG in the release of Raymond Davis, as claimed in his controversial book.”
He urged the nation not to fall prey to Indian conspiracies and not to project Davis as a hero. “He is nothing but an agent to the RAW,” he claimed. “I have documentary proof that Davis was approached by Indian agency RAW’s Additional Secretary Jagnathan Kumar for writing the book The Contractor in order to malign Pakistan’s premier agency ISI, the Pakistan military and the civilian leadership,” he said.