Pakistani judge charges two from CIA

ISLAMABAD – A Pakistani judge on Tuesday ordered that criminal charges be filed against a former CIA lawyer who oversaw its drone program and the one-time chief agency operative in Islamabad over a 2009 strike that killed two people.

Former acting general counsel John Rizzo and ex-station chief Jonathan Bank must face charges including murder, conspiracy, terrorism and waging war against Pakistan, Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui of the Islamabad High Court ruled.

Rizzo and Bank could not be immediately reached for comment. The CIA will have no comment, spokesman Chris White said.

The legal action comes as the number of CIA drone strikes in Pakistan has fallen precipitously from a high in 2010, amid signs that the U.S. and Pakistan have been more closely cooperating on counterterrorism issues after years of tensions. It is unclear how the criminal charges will affect that cooperation, even though the defendants will almost certainly never see the inside of a Pakistani courtroom.

The only way the case could go forward is if U.S. officials cooperate with the Pakistani court, which is inconceivable given that the drone strikes were carried out under a program ordered by two successive U.S. presidents.

The case recalls legal charges brought by an independent magistrate in Italy against CIA officers involved in the 2003 kidnapping of a terror suspect. Nine Americans were convicted but none returned to Italy to face the charges.

Bank was sent home from Pakistan in 2010 after his cover was blown when a Pakistani man named Kareem Khan initially threatened to sue the CIA and others for $500 million over the deaths of his 18-year-old son, Zaenullah Khan, and his brother, Asif Iqbal, in a purported Dec. 31, 2009, strike on the North Waziristan tribal region.