The US defence attaché Col Joseph Hall, who was involved in a fatal road accident last month, was on Saturday stopped from flying out on an American military aircraft by Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), Pakistan’s Dawn News reported.
Hall had reached Nur Khan Air Base for boarding the aircraft that had come to take him but he was not allowed to leave, an official told the newspaper.
The US Air Force C-130 flew into Islamabad at 11.15am local time from Bagram airbase in Afghanistan. Hall accompanied by around eight people from the embassy reached the air base around five minutes later for boarding the aircraft.
Pakistan’s FIA officer on duty after finding out that it was Hall, held back his passport and sought directions from his seniors, according to a source. The permission for Hall to leave was not granted and the special aircraft returned to Bagram at around 4pm, according to the report.
The diplomat later returned to the embassy. A US Embassy spokesman refused to comment on the matter, it said.
Hall last month ran a red light, killing a motorcyclist Ateeq Baig, 22, according to Dawn News.
In the meantime, New York Times reported that Pakistan’s Interior Ministry said Hall is on a “blacklist” and is not allowed to leave because of the criminal case pending against him.
Pakistan officials have demanded the United States waive his diplomatic immunity so that he can face a criminal trial, but American officials have refused.
The report said that on Friday, Islamabad’s High Court, noting that Hall did not have full diplomatic immunity, left it up to the government to decide whether to add his name to a travel ban list.
Also on Friday, Pakistan placed travel restrictions on United States diplomats based in the country, the latest in a series of retaliatory measures that threaten to plunge already strained relations to their worst level in years.
The restrictions in Pakistan were imposed on the same day that the United States barred diplomats working at the Pakistan Embassy in Washington from traveling outside a 49km radius around the city without approval.