In mid-March the two-month-old controversy over Raymond Davis, a US citizen and contractor for the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), who was being detained by Pakistani authorities, was resolved. On March 16th a court in the capital of Punjab province, Lahore, acquitted Mr Davis on charges of murder after relatives of the men he was accused of killing testified that they had accepted money as compensation. This is in accordance with the sharia principle of diyya, or compensation paid to a victim's survivors. The relatives of the men who were killed had been under pressure by Pakistani officials to accept such a settlement for weeks, and had been refusing; ultimately, however, they accepted payment of around US$2m in total. It is widely assumed that the US government paid the "blood money", but US officials have denied this.

There was public unrest throughout Pakistan following the settlement. Protest rallies occurred in Lahore, Karachi (the capital of Sindh province and Pakistan's commercial hub) and Peshawar (the capital of Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa) as well as in the national capital, Islamabad. In some areas of Karachi a partial strike was observed at the request of several Islamic groups. The US government closed its embassy and consulate in Islamabad on March 18th in anticipation of possible violence. Protest rallies were led by various political parties, lawyers, students and religious groups, and were mostly anti-US, although many were also critical of the Pakistani government.