ISLAMABAD: Islamabad police on Monday asked the government to place US Defense and Air Attaché Col. Joseph Emanuel on the exit control list, which restricts foreign travel.

In a letter to the Interior Ministry, the police said they had received information from reliable sources that Emanuel could leave Pakistan to avoid ongoing investigations.

The police registered a case against him on Saturday after a vehicle he was driving ran a red light and hit a motorbike, killing a young man and injuring another.

“The investigation is underway, so we don’t want him to leave Pakistan,” Police Inspector Khalid Awan, the lead investigator in the case, told Arab News. Islamabad’s traffic police have been asked to cancel Emanuel’s driving license, Awan added.

But the Foreign Ministry told the police in a letter that because Emanuel is a diplomat, it had “limited options to investigate the matter,” Awan said.

The police impounded the vehicle involved in the accident, but could not arrest Emmanuel due to his diplomatic immunity.

Article 29 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 1961, says a diplomat “shall not be liable to any form of arrest or detention. The receiving state shall treat him with due respect and shall take all appropriate steps to prevent any attack on his person, freedom or dignity.”

As the police have registered the case under section 279 (rash driving) and 320 (unintentional murder), the US Embassy may try to settle the issue by paying blood money to the family.

“Whoever commits qatl-ikhata (unintentional murder) by rash or negligent driving shall, having regard to the facts and circumstances of the case, in addition to diyat (blood money), be punished with imprisonment… for a term which may extend to ten years,” says section 320 of the Pakistan Penal Code.

Mohammad Idrees, father of the deceased Atiq Baig, said nobody from the Pakistani government or the US Embassy has approached the family so far for any kind of settlement. “We need justice, we won’t accept blood money,” he told Arab News.

“We’re poor people, but we hope our chief justice and the government will do everything possible to get us justice.”

On Sunday, the embassy released a statement expressing “deep sympathy to the family of the deceased and those injured in a tragic traffic accident involving a US Embassy vehicle.” It said embassy officials are cooperating with local authorities investigating the accident.

Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry on Sunday summoned US Ambassador David Hale to protest the incident.

When asked about the embassy’s position regarding blood money and a foreign travel ban on Emanuel, spokesman Richard Snelsire said: “I have no comment.”