The US on Sunday mounted a defence for an American facing a double murder charge for shooting two Pakistani men in Lahore, saying he was a member of the US mission's staff and entitled to diplomatic immunity. A statement issued by the US embassy on Sunday evening said: "The US diplomat detained in Lahore is a member of the US embassy's technical and administrative staff, and therefore entitled to full criminal immunity and cannot be lawfully arrested or detained in accordance with the Vienna Convention". The embassy noted that the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations provides diplomatic immunity to all diplomats around the world. Deputy Prosecutor General of Punjab, Rana Bakhtiar said on Sunday that Raymond Davis had fired the bullets from the back thus it was not a case of ‘self defense’ as he had stated earlier. Rana also said that Davis, charged with murder of two motorcyclists in Lahore, did not hold any special privileges as a diplomat. Referring to Article 49-2 of the Vienna Convention, he said that diplomatic officials only hold privilege when they are on duty, but Davis was in Pakistan on a business visa. Davis is being described by the American media as a security contractor from a Florida-based firm, Hyperion Protective Consultants, LLC. That Foreign Office and the US embassy were not on the same page on the issue of status of the accused was obvious from an FO press release that mentioned Davis as a US ‘functionary’, and not a diplomat.
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