ISLAMABAD: The lawyer who represented the heirs of two young men shot dead by CIA operative Raymond Davis in Lahore has said there had been no pressure on his clients to accept Rs200 million as blood money, given to them in his presence in bundles of 5,000-rupee notes.
“I had arranged a meeting at some place in Defence (Housing Society), Lahore, where I was staying, and in my presence 18 legal heirs were paid the diyat amount in cash according to the Islamic law of inheritance,” Advocate Raja Mohammad Irshad told by telephone from his native village outside Islamabad.Davis was reported to have quietly left Pakistan after a court in Lahore acquitted him on Wednesday of the charge of double murder after the families of the two victims — Faizan and Faheem — pardoned him during a secret hearing inside Lahore's Kot Lakhpat jail.
Raja Irshad, who represented the federal government before the Supreme Court consecutively for six years from 2002 as deputy attorney general, said he had no idea who paid the blood money, but it was brought by an individual about whose identity he raised no question. But surely, he said, the man was not a foreigner.
“There was no coercion, there was no pressure, and everything was done freely,” he said, apparently referring to allegations of arm-twisting first voiced by another lawyer in Lahore, Asad Manzoor Butt, who said he was the original counsel of the victims' families but was not allowed by jail authorities to appear at the last hearing.
Raja Irshad chose not to explain how he was engaged by the legal heirs to represent them, but said they had complete confidence in him which was reinforced by the fact that he served to enhance the blood money to Rs200 million ($2.3 million) from the earlier agreed amount of Rs20-Rs30 million.
The counsel said he visited the heirs two or three times and met the widow of one victim and the father of the other. He was engaged days before the final acquittal of Davis by the court of Additional District and Sessions Judge Mohammad Yousuf Aujla. “I played the role in increasing the amount because the money which was to be paid to the inheritors earlier was neither acceptable nor justified,” Raja Irshad said, dismissing speculations that the compensation could have been much greater or that the two families were given only a fraction of the total amount paid.
“These are highly irresponsible statements and should not be hurled when no evidence is in hand to substantiate them,” he said, also brushing aside an impression that Davis's acquittal was the result of procedural or legal irregularities.
The judge, he said, had independently conducted the entire proceedings during which he repeatedly told the defence counsel and the prosecution that they were entitled to raise any objection they deemed necessary.
Raja Irshad also rejected the allegations that the sessions court had exercised its authority without any jurisdiction and that the case should have been dealt with by an anti-terrorism court.
“If it were so, then why Davis was booked under section 302 (murder charge) of the Pakistan Penal Code, and not under sections 6 or 7 of the Anti-Terrorist Act, 1997,” he said, adding that even if the accused was wrongly booked why did those now venting steam not approach the Lahore High Court in time to get the charges changed.
Raja Irshad said it was because of his request before the district and sessions judge that personal attendance of the legal heirs was made possible who appeared one by one before the court and signed the pardon document in the presence of a three-member team of defence counsel, headed by Advocate Zulfikar Bukhari, and the additional prosecutor general of Punjab, district attorney and additional district attorney, Lahore.
The lawyer was of the opinion that the victims' heirs were still in the country, but acknowledged that they were afraid of the hue and cry raised over their acceptance of the blood money.
Raja Irshad said that none of the prosecution or the defence counsel had ever objected to his filing the power of attorney to defend the victims' families during the court proceedings. All members of the two families appeared before the court in person one by one and testified before the court that they had received the money with their free will and without any coercion.
The court, he said, had accepted the pardon statements after asking questions from each member of the victims' families and having completely satisfying itself. All documentation work and proceedings were in Urdu language instead of English (the usual court language) to enable the victims' families to understand every word being spoken there, the lawyer said.
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