Lahore, Pakistan:
The case of Raymond A. Davis, a former United States Special Forces soldier who is being held in connection with the deaths of two Pakistanis, has stirred a diplomatic furor, sending the precarious relationship between the United States and Pakistan to a new low, both sides say.
Mr. Davis, 36, was driving in dense traffic in this city on Jan. 27 when, he later told the police, two Pakistani men on a motorcycle tried to rob him. He shot and killed both and was arrested immediately afterward by police officers who say he was carrying a Glock handgun, a flashlight that attached to a headband and a pocket telescope.
The mystery about what Mr. Davis was doing with this inventory of gadgets has touched directly on Pakistani resentments that members of the large American security presence here roam the country freely and are not answerable to the Pakistani authorities.
The Pakistani press, dwelling on the items in Mr. Davis's possession and his various identity cards, has been filled with speculation about his specific duties, which American officials would not discuss. Mr. Davis's jobs have been loosely defined by American officials as "security" or "technical," though his duties were known only to his immediate superiors.
The Obama administration insists that Mr. Davis is protected by diplomatic immunity under the Vienna Conventions and that he must be released from custody. He was unlawfully seized on the street by the police after the shootings, the administration says, and should have been allowed to return to the American Consulate in Lahore in conformity with diplomatic protection.
The United States has warned Pakistan that if Mr. Davis is not released, a much sought-after state visit by President Asif Ali Zardari to Washington, planned for the end of March, could be jeopardized and badly needed financial assistance could be cut.
Last weekend on the sidelines at a conference in Munich, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told the Pakistani Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, that Mr. Davis was being held illegally and must be freed, a senior American official said.
American officials said they were concerned for the safety of Mr. Davis, who is being held by the law enforcement authorities of Punjab Province, an area that is becoming increasingly radicalized by Islamic militants.
The Pakistani government, facing public anger and round-the-clock press coverage, has resisted the American demands for Mr. Davis's release, saying the courts will deal with him.
Religious parties have rallied round the families of the dead men, further stiffening the reluctance of the government to free Mr. Davis.
He is being held at a police training center in Lahore under a kind of house arrest, where he is isolated from Pakistani prisoners, according to a senior Pakistani police investigator. He has refused to answer any questions, or talk about his family, the investigator said.
The public furor increased Sunday when the 18-year-old wife of one of the men Mr. Davis shot committed suicide, after saying she believed that the American would be unfairly freed.
At the heart of the public outcry seems to be uncertainty over the nature of Mr. Davis's work, and questions about why his camera, according to police investigators, had pictures of buildings in Pakistani cities.
One of the identification cards confiscated by the police after his arrest and given to a Pakistani newspaper, Dawn, said he was a Defense Department contractor. Another identification card said he was attached to the consulate in Peshawar, which contradicts an initial American Embassy statement on the day of the shooting that described Mr. Davis as a staff member of the consulate in Lahore.
According to the Pakistani police, Mr. Davis, dressed in jeans and a checked shirt, was driving along one of the busiest thoroughfares in Lahore when he shot the two men through the windshield of his car. He then stepped out of his car and photographed the dead men with a digital camera. He said at the time that he shot in self-defense because he believed that the men were armed, the police said.
Dr. Fahhar-u-Zamana, who conducted the post-mortem examination, said one victim, Faizan Haider, had five bullets in his body, including two in his back. The other victim, Muhammad Fahim, had four bullets in his body, including one in his brain and one in his back.
The Lahore police said Mr. Haider and Mr. Fahim were armed and carrying stolen cellphones when they were shot.
Moments after Mr. Davis shot the two men, he called for help, and a vehicle belonging to the American Consulate in Lahore raced to the scene, driving the wrong way on a one-way street. It ran over a Pakistani cyclist, who later died in a hospital.
Photographs of the windshield of Mr. Davis's white rental car, with the bullet holes in it, were widely published in the Pakistani press, accompanied by remarks about Mr. Davis's accurate marksmanship.
Mr. Davis spent 10 years in the American military, starting with basic training at Fort Benning, Ga., in 1993. He moved to special warfare training with the Third Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg, N.C., in 1998, and left the Army in 2003. His only overseas posting, according to his Army service record, was a six-month stint as a member of a United Nations peacekeeping force in Macedonia in 1994.
After leaving the military, Mr. Davis apparently decided to take advantage of the boom in the military contracting business. He and his wife, Rebecca Davis, set up Hyperion Protective Services in 2006 in Nevada, a company that appears to have sought government contracts for security services, according to company filings in Nevada.
The company does not appear to have won big contracts, and may have been in the business of offering just Mr. Davis's services, according to a former Special Forces officer who reviewed the company filings.
Mr. Davis arrived in Pakistan in late 2009, according to his visa application from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. That document described his rank as "administrative and technical staff."
His first assignment was apparently in Peshawar, a city on the edge of the tribal areas. A Pakistani who worked in the house where Mr. Davis stayed remembered him as a generous tipper who left several hundred dollars for each of the staff members when he left last year.
Whatever the resolution of Mr. Davis's case, there are bound to be repercussions, Pakistani officials said. "The murders in Lahore should lead to stricter measures directed toward putting an end to the free movement of armed U.S. personnel on our streets," said Saeed Khalid, a former director of the Americas Division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
(Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan, Waqar Gillani from Lahore, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.)