US to close Pakistan embassy, consulates amid protests

ISLAMABAD: The US embassy in Islamabad will close its doors and shut its consulates in Pakistan on Friday because of ongoing protests after the release of a CIA contractor accused of double murder.

Small demonstrations have broken out across the country after American Raymond Davis, who shot dead two men in Lahore in January, was set free Wednesday after paying $2 million in blood money to the families of the dead.

"The US embassy and consulates will be closed for routine business tomorrow," embassy spokesman Alberto Rodriguez said on Thursday.

The decision was made "for public safety at large because there may be demonstrations tomorrow".

The biggest protest was in Lahore, where some 800 students rallied at Punjab University campus chanting anti-US slogans such as "Death to America".

Security was tightened at the US consulate in Lahore, with several roads near the building blocked with barbed wire and concrete slabs. The other US consulates are in Karachi and the northwestern city of Peshawar.

In Peshawar, police used teargas and beat back about 100 students trying to block a main road outside the city university, arresting nine students, senior police official Mohammad Ijaz told AFP.

Some demonstrators threw stones while others burned an effigy of Davis.

About 300 people also rallied in the central city of Multan and token protests were held in the capital Islamabad.

The shooting, which Davis said was in self-defence, sparked protests and ruptured fragile ties with the United States, which said that Davis enjoyed full diplomatic immunity from prosecution and pressed for his release.

Islamabad had been under domestic pressure to stand up to its superpower ally and try Davis for murder, but authorities let him go following a lengthy court hearing on Wednesday at the Lahore jail where Davis was detained.

The families of the two dead men who received blood money, or "diyat", which is legal under Pakistani law and conforms to Islamic sharia law, disappeared following the decision, one cousin and another neighbour told AFP.

"For two days we've have no contact with them. They have locked their house and disappeared," said Mukhtar Ahmad, a cousin of Faizan Haider, one of the two men shot dead by Davis.

"Nobody knows where they have gone. We don't even know if they're in Pakistan." Siddique Ahmad, a neighbour of Mohammad Faheem, the second man killed, said: "We do not know where they have been moved to. They were living here in a small rented house, they were poor people."

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said the United States is "very grateful" for the family pardon.

She reaffirmed that a US investigation had been launched into the incident on January 27.

"And we have communicated our strong support for the relationship between Pakistan and the United States, which we consider to be of strategic importance," she said.