SO it is that the Sharia law called diyat $2.3mn in "blood money". that saved the live of Davis 36 who work for Blackwater the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

Raymond Davis killed two Pakistanis, enraging many in a country already suspicious of US intervention [GALLO/GETTY] The case of Raymond Davis has all the trappings of a 21st century spy novel. It is a story of murder, prison and clandestine payments, starring a burly former US Special Forces soldier tangled in CIA contractor Raymond Davis was charged with killing two Pakistani men He was released after a purported seven-figure sum was paid to victims' families "Blood money" is allowed under a Sharia practice called diyat, or compensation (CNN) -- Perhaps more important than the newest mystery surrounding CIA contractor Raymond Davis -- who paid the purported seven-figure sum to the Pakistani victims' families who blessed his release from jail? -- will be the political reaction within Pakistan, where the populace is already outraged over Davis' fatal shooting of two men there, analysts said Wednesday. The other potential impact of the "Raymond Davis Affair," as one analyst dubbed it, is whether it will damage diplomatic relations between the United States and Pakistan, in which Americans depend on Pakistan in fighting terror and the Pakistanis enjoy substantial U.S. aid. "There is the curious question of who made the payment. I suppose it's going to remain a mystery for a while," said Mark Quarterman, director of the Program on Crisis, Conflict, and Cooperation of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "His presence there and the story about his presence were kind of a mystery from the start," Quarterman added. "Now his presence in Pakistan ends with one more curiosity. I think the fallout from this is far from over. It will be interesting to see what the reaction is in Pakistan. It's been the lead story" in media there, he added. Davis was released under a Sharia practice called diyat, or compensation, which is enshrined in Pakistan's penal code and allows victims' families to pardon a murderer with or without being paid "blood money," said the former chief justice of Pakistan's Supreme Court, Saeed U Zaman Saddiqi. Embassy cautions Americans in Pakistan Pakistan releases CIA contractor 'Blood money' may free CIA contractor a murky web of intelligence agencies, competing diplomats and – differentiating his case from Cold War spy sagas – shady private military contractors. Pakistani authorities released the CIA contractor from prison on Wednesday, after families of two motorcyclists he killed in January were paid a reported $2.3mn in "blood money". Details surrounding the case are sketchy at best: a series of claims and counter-claims from various diplomats, agencies and organisations which are almost impossible to independently verify. And the stakes are high. Privatising conflict "The case highlights the fact that the US is engaged in a covert war in Pakistan - a country it has not declared war against," says Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: the Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. Davis, 36, once hustled for Blackwater, the controversial military contractor responsible for killing civilians in Iraq, which has since been rebranded as Xe Services LLC. "He worked for Blackwater when the company was working on the drone bombing campaign with the JSOC [Joint Special Operations Command], and the CIA against high-value individuals in Pakistan," Scahill told Al Jazeera. Davis owns Hyperion Protective Consultants, according to ABC News. The firm sells surveillance equipment and provides clients with "loss and risk management professionals". In the new world of intelligence, individuals can wear several different hats, often at the same time. "In theory, it would be cheaper to have government agents do the work contractors are doing: they don't get paid as much and there is no dedicated profit margin," says Eamon Javers, author of Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy: The Secret World of Corporate Espionage. "There is a huge open question about the legal jurisdiction these contractors are operating under in war zones. They are not accountable to US military justice, as special ops would be," Javers told Al Jazeera. Christine Fair, a Pakistan expert at Georgetown University says, "There is nothing abnormal about military contractors gathering intelligence, conducting warfare or helping with diplomacy", concerns about high costs, impunity and jurisdiction notwithstanding. "The way we [Americans] do business, fight wars, provide assistance, and the way we run our embassies is being done through contractors," Fair told Al Jazeera. Who is immune? When Pakistani authorities arrested Davis in Lahore, he carried classic tools of the spy trade: a Glock semiautomatic pistol, a long-range wireless set, camera, flashlight and small telescope. The initial public conflict between Pakistan and the US revolved around Davis's diplomatic status. The US said the contractor had diplomatic immunity from prosecution, while Pakistani authorities disputed the claim. According to Fair, the issue of diplomatic immunity is simple and was "misconstrued" throughout the Davis saga. Whether Davis was a contractor or a formal embassy employee is not important for the question of immunity, she says. "The diplomatic status of staff members is set by the sending countries," she says, referring in this case to the US. "The Pakistani government has one choice to make: to accept the terms or not to. Pakistan accepted the terms and issued a visa and then re-issued it." There is no debate about the process for getting diplomatic immunity, as Pakistan and the US have signed the Vienna Convention which sets out the rules. But Jeremy Scahill is not sure Davis's diplomatic status is quite so clear. "There have been some reports that the US tried to claim he was a diplomat after the events took place," Scahill says. Conflicting crime stories The events in question transpired on January 27. Davis was driving his car through a poor section of Lahore. He stopped at a crowded intersection. Two Pakistani men jumped off motorcycles and came towards him, with weapons drawn, according to American accounts of the incident. Davis opened fire with his Glock, killing them. He said he fired in self-defence, assuming they were trying to rob him. Pakistani authorities disputed this claim, saying the men were shot in the back and Davis got out of his car to take photographs of the bodies. Pakistani security forces chased Davis to a traffic circle a short distance away from the crime scene and arrested him. Before being taken down, Davis called the US Consulate to extract him from the dicey situation. The US sent an unmarked SUV tearing through the streets of Lahore. It drove the wrong way down a one way street, killing a random motorcyclist, in a development that further infuriated Pakistanis. The three killings lead to widespread outrage, fuelling anti-American demonstrations. "Those who oppose the partnership between Pakistan and the US have been making noise," says Rasul Baksh Raees, a political science professor at Lahore University of Management Sciences. Wary of anger on the streets, Pakistan's government may have initially denied giving the contractor immunity to save face, says Muqtedar Khan, a professor of international relations at the University of Delaware. Intrigue Many Pakistanis, including the political opposition, are furious about US drone strikes and other killings in the country. But this is nothing new. The intrigue concerns the identities of the men Davis killed - and the nature of his mission. "Some suggest Davis was trying to document links between Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) and Lashkar-e-Taiba [the Army of the Pure], which would expose the ISI's links to the Mumbai attacks [of 2008]," says Khan. The US and UN Security Council have designated Lashkar as an international terrorist organisation. In February, Leon Panetta, the CIA director, said the ISI-CIA relationship is one of the "most complicated" he has encountered during his time in intelligence. "If Ray Davis was targeting Laskhkar or trying to establish links between it and Pakistani intelligence, that would be probably one of the most sensitive places to hit the ISI," says Jeremy Scahill, the author and investigative journalist. In a US federal court in New York, a lawsuit was filed in 2010 against the ISI for backing the Mumbai attacks. Davis's conclusions could have damaged more than the ISI's public image. US tax dollars paid to Pakistani security forces under the auspices of fighting terrorism, not to mention a major financial settlement, could be at stake. Christine Fair, the Georgetown professor, says two high-level Pakistani officials told her that the men Davis killed were ISI agents tasked with following him. Davis worked out of a safe house in an obscure part of Lahore as part of a CIA cell investigating Lashkar, Fair says. "The CIA cooperates with the ISI on certain issues," Fair says. "But these organisations also operate against each other. This is spy versus spy." The origins of Lashkar can be traced to US support for forces fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980s, Khan says. Today, the group operates openly in Pakistan from a sprawling compound in the suburbs of Lahore, where it runs schools, hospitals and a blood bank. Hafiz Saeed, the group's leader, is a frequent commentator in the Pakistani press. The group frequently espouses anti-Western ideology, targeting India, Israel and the US in their literature, says professor Fair, adding that "they never really operated to achieve those larger objectives – perhaps until 2004, when they started attacking the US in Afghanistan". The ISI and some other branches of Pakistan's government see Lashkar as an important tool against India in Kashmir, a province claimed by both India and Pakistan, says Muqtedar Khan. "In recent years, the balance of power has shifted significantly in India's favour, in terms of traditional warfare," Khan says. "The economic disparity is such that Pakistan cannot launch a conventional war against India for Kashmir," he says. Pakistan sees unconventional forces like Lashkar as crucial defences against its traditional rival. Pakistan also worries about Indian dominance in Afghanistan after the US pulls out, and wants Lashkar ready to fill the vacuum of American power, Khan says. Money talks Raymond Davis's case has caused head-aches for the US and Pakistan. They both hoped it would go-away, but neither could lose face. The payment of "blood money" to relatives of the men Davis killed - an accepted custom in Pakistan - was the easiest solution. The sum of $2.3mn is exponentially higher than what the US normally pays family members when its forces kill innocents in Iraq or Afghanistan, Jeremy Scahill says. Money talks, and such a large sum illustrates the importance of the case. According to Scahill, the blood money suggested by the US state department for victims of Blackwater killings in Iraq was about $5,000. "What is even more important than the money, is what the Pakistanis and the ISI extracted from the US in exchange for [Davis's] release," Scahill says. After "blood money" was paid, American consular officials whisked Raymond Davis out of the country. His exact mission, or the conclusions from the intelligence he gathered, may never come to light. Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, denied that the US paid family members. However, she wouldn't comment on who forked over the cash. "It is rather a charade to suggest [the US] didn't pay family members," says Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst, who alleged that the payment came from Pakistan's ISI, which receives money from the US through bilateral military cooperation deals. But Davis's political footprint will last, as anti-American protests spread across Pakistan, with people demanding more accountability from foreign forces operating on Pakistani territory. "Raymond Davis was basically the tip of the iceberg," says Professor Khan. "He was not the cause, but a part of, the diverging interests between Pakistan and the US in the war on terror." Raymond Davis Although the origins of the payments in the Davis case are a significant political matter, the more imminent concern is whether average Pakistanis will accept how "blood money" was paid to the victims' families, analysts said. "What we're watching for," analyst Scott Stewart of the online global intelligence firm Stratfor said in a statement, "is to see which way public sentiment rules: whether it will accept this resolution as acceptable or whether they will be outraged and take to the streets." On Wednesday, it wasn't known who paid the compensation to the families, and there were conflicting accounts over how much. A lawyer closely connected to the case said the payment was $1.4 million, but Punjab province law minister Rana Sanaullah said that $2.34 million was paid to the legal heirs by the U.S. government. A U.S. official not authorized to speak for attribution insisted that the release of Davis was a decision made by the Pakistanis and that there was "no quid pro quo" between Washington and Islamabad. It was Pakistani officials who worked with the family in making the arrangements for what is referred to as "blood money," the official said. The United States "did not sit across from the families" to work out an arrangement, but the official acknowledged that there were "interagency discussions and a policy decision" for the United States to agree to the arrangement, the official said. The official said "cooperation continues" between the United States and Pakistan despite the recent controversy. "Flareups happen periodically," the official said, pointing to the Davis incident and the public disclosure of the name of the CIA's chief of station in Islamabad. The U.S. relationship with Pakistan "has evolved over the years" and "increasingly has the ability to withstand these kinds of disagreements," said the official. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said "we are very grateful" for the families' decision, which enabled Davis to leave Pakistan, stressed that the U.S. government didn't pay any compensation to the families, and she wouldn't say whether the Pakistanis or a third party did. "We also have a Department of Justice investigation that has begun into what happened in Lahore. And we've communicated our strong support for the relationship between Pakistan and the United States, which we consider to be of strategic importance," Clinton said during a press conference Wednesday. Analyst Robert Grenier, the former CIA station chief in Islamabad, said the Sharia practice allowed both countries to save face in a difficult controversy. "It had become such a huge domestic political issue in Pakistan, and both sides had a very strong interest in finding some way out of the corner that they had been painted into," Grenier said. In recent years, the U.S. government has compensated families accidentally injured during counterinsurgency warfare, said Grenier, who's now chairman of ERG Partners, a financial advisory firm in Westport, Connecticut. "Let's not forget that the U.S. government has frequently paid blood money to people who have fallen victim to collateral damage in Afghanistan and Iraq. So albeit that the details of this case are quite extraordinary and quite different from the usual ones in Iraq and Afghanistan, the idea of paying blood money under Sharia is not new," Grenier said. In Highland Park, Colorado, where Davis lives, his wife, Rebecca, defended him in an interview with reporters outside her their home. "I knew it was self-defense. He's not a Rambo as the L.A. Times said," Davis' wife said. "He's not an agent. He's not Jason Bourne. He's not any of these kind of crazy things that have been portrayed of him." After being released from jail where he had been held since January, Davis was taken to Kabul, Afghanistan, on Wednesday, where he was resting and receiving a medical exam, said the U.S. official who asked not to be identified. Sanaullah, the Punjab province law minister, first told Pakistani media Wednesday that the victims' families did not want to press charges and added that Davis would be free to go. The statement came just hours after the American was charged with murder in connection with January shootings that left two Pakistani men dead. Sanaullah later said that $1,169,500 was paid to 11 legal heirs of one victim and the same amount was paid to eight legal heirs of the others. The court asked the legal heirs whether there was any pressure on them to make this agreement, and they told the court that they forgave Davis on their own free will, Sanaullah said. Davis claimed self-defense in the shootings and asserted the two men attacked him as he drove through a busy Lahore neighborhood, but Lahore Police Chief Aslam Tareen said "it was clear-cut murder." Many Pakistanis wanted Davis to be tried, and hard-line Pakistani clerics demanded that their government not release Davis to the U.S. government. On Wednesday, Davis appeared in the Lahore court after the payment was made and was acquitted of the charges, in accordance with diyat, said the lawyer closely connected to the case. The court released Davis from two cases, the double murder and the carrying of an illegal gun. In the gun charge, the court fined Davis $250 and credited him with time served in jail, Sanaullah said. The amount of diyat was not paid in front of the court to the legal heirs because the court needs only affidavits from the legal heirs saying that they have pardoned the accused, Sanaullah said. Carmela Conroy, the U.S. consul general in Lahore, escorted Davis after his release, Sanaullah said. The United States had been seeking the release of Davis from a Lahore jail on the grounds that he has diplomatic immunity. U.S. officials originally said Davis was a diplomat and later revealed that he is a CIA contractor, intensifying the already highly charged situation.