Pakistan drops charges against former CIA officials
Pakistani police say they have dropped charges of murder, conspiracy, waging war and terrorism against a former CIA station chief and a former agency lawyer over a 2009 drone strike that killed two people.
Police officer Mohammad Nawaz said the charges against ex-station chief Jonathan Banks and former acting general counsel John A. Rizzo was dropped on Wednesday because the drone attack did not happen in the jurisdiction of the police station in Islamabad, where the case had been registered.
Tribal elder Karim Khan had filed the complaint to sue the CIA chief and other CIA officials and reportedly sought $500 million for the deaths of his 18-year-old son and his brother in a December 31, 2009 drone strike in the Pakistani tribal region.
Banks reportedly devised the attack and Rizzo approved the targeted killings by CIA drones in Pakistan.
Banks fled Pakistan after public protests erupted when right activists blew his cover in 2010.
The aerial attacks, initiated by former US President George W. Bush, have escalated under President Barack Obama.
Islamabad has repeatedly condemned the attacks, saying they violate Pakistan’s sovereignty.
The United Nations says the US-operated drone strikes in Pakistan pose a growing challenge to the international rule of law.
Philip Alston, the UN special envoy on extrajudicial killings, said in a report in October 2010 that the attacks were undermining the rules designed to protect the right of life.
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