text: The political party led by the former cricket star Imran Khan claims to have blown the cover of the CIA's most senior officer in Pakistan as part of an increasingly high-stakes campaign against US drone strikes. 
   
   The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party named a man it claimed was head of the CIA station in Islamabad in a letter to police demanding he be nominated as one of the people responsible for a drone strike on 21 November, which killed five militants including senior commanders of the Haqqani Network. 
   
   John Brennan, the CIA director, was also nominated as an "accused person" for murder and "waging war against Pakistan". 
   
   The US embassy said it could not comment but was looking into the matter. The CIA spokesman Dean Boyd would not confirm the station chief's name and declined to immediately comment, AP reported. 
   
   If his identity is confirmed it will be the second time anti-drone campaigners have unmasked a top US spy in Pakistan. 
   
   In 2010 another CIA station chief, Jonathan Banks, was named in criminal proceedings initiated after a drone strike. Banks was forced to leave the country. 
   
   As with the Banks case, questions will be raised about how the PTI came to know the identity of the top US intelligence official in the country. 
   
   Although nearly all foreign spies in Pakistan use diplomatic cover stories to hide their occupation, many, including station chiefs, are declared to the country's domestic spy agency. 
   
   The letter signed by the PTI spokeswoman Shireen Mazari demanded the named agent be prevented from leaving the country so that he could be arrested. The PTI said it hoped he would reveal "through interrogation" the names of the remote pilots who operated the drone. 
   
   "CIA station chief is not a diplomatic post, therefore he does not enjoy any diplomatic immunity and is within the bounds of domestic laws of Pakistan," the letter said. 
   
   The accusation comes at a time when drones have once again become a matter of intense controversy in Pakistan. 
   
   The country's interior minister, Chaudhry Nisar, denounced a drone strike in early November. Although the attack killed the much hated chief of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, Nisar said it had wrecked the government's efforts to hold peace talks with militant groups. 
   
   And it infuriated Khan, who has built much of his political platform around opposition to drones, which he claims are largely responsible for the upsurge of domestic terrorism in Pakistan in recent years – a suggestion disputed by many experts. 
   
   The 21 November strike was even more provocative as it was one of the first ever strikes outside the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, where nearly all attacks by the unmanned aircraft have taken place in the past. 
   
   The attack on a religious seminary associated with the Haqqani Network was in Hangu, an area in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the province where Khan's PTI leads a coalition government. 
   
   Khan responded with a massive rally in the provincial capital of Peshawar and ordered PTI activists to block vehicles carrying supplies to Nato troops in Afghanistan. 
   
   However, party workers have struggled to identify Nato cargo amid all the sealed containers plying the roads to Afghanistan. The exercise has received no support from the national government and the police have tried to stop PTI workers blocking lorries. ||||| A political party opposed to U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan revealed what it said was the name of the top CIA spy in the country on Wednesday and called for him and the head of the agency to be tried for a recent missile strike. 
   
   Shireen Mazari, information secretary of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, shows a document during a news conference in Islamabad, Pakistan, Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2013. A political party opposed to U.S.... (Associated Press) 
   
   Supporters of Tehreek-e-Insaf or Movement for Justice party chant anti-U.S. slogans during a rally in Peshawar, Pakistan, Saturday, Nov. 23, 2013. Thousands of people protesting U.S. drone strikes blocked... (Associated Press) 
   
   A Pakistani man walks by a truck carrying NATO military vehicles at a terminal in Karachi, Pakistan, Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2013. Trucks carrying NATO troop supplies to Afghanistan remained stuck in Pakistan... (Associated Press) 
   
   Supporters of Pakistan's Tehreek-e-Insaf party, headed by cricketer-turned politician Imran Khan, wave their party's flag while burning a representation of a U.S. flag during a protest against U.S. drone... (Associated Press) 
   
   CIA spokesman Dean Boyd would not confirm the Islamabad station chief's name and declined to immediately comment. The Associated Press is not publishing the name given by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party because it could not verify its authenticity. 
   
   It was the second time in recent years that Pakistanis opposed to drone strikes targeting Islamic militants have claimed to have revealed the identity of the top CIA spy in the country. The missile attacks have become an increasing source of tension between the U.S. and Pakistan, but Washington has shown no willingness to stop them. 
   
   Shireen Mazari, the information secretary for Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, called for the current station chief and CIA director John Brennan to be tried for murder and waging war against Pakistan in connection with a drone strike in northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Nov. 21. She claimed the station chief did not enjoy diplomatic immunity. 
   
   Mazari said in a news conference that the strike on an Islamic seminary in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's Hangu district "killed and injured a large number of those present, including children." 
   
   But Pakistani intelligence officials say the attack killed five Afghan militants, one of whom was a deputy to the leader of one of the most dangerous groups fighting American troops in Afghanistan. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to journalists. 
   
   The Hangu district police chief, Iftikhar Ahmad, said at the time that no one was seriously wounded in the attack. 
   
   The strike was one of the first to take place outside of Pakistan's remote tribal region and outraged members of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, which controls the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government. 
   
   The party is led by cricket star Imran Khan, who has been an especially vocal critic of drone strikes. He and other Pakistani officials publicly criticize the strikes as a violation of the country's sovereignty, although the government secretly supported some past attacks. They also say the strikes kill too many civilians. 
   
   Human rights organizations say the attacks have killed hundreds of civilians. The U.S. rarely discusses the covert CIA drone program in Pakistan, but officials have insisted the civilian casualty figures are much lower. 
   
   Khan's party pledged on Saturday to block trucks carrying NATO troop supplies to and from Afghanistan until the U.S. stopped drone attacks. Protesters stopped trucks and roughed up drivers before the police intervened to stop them. The NATO supply trucks remain stuck though because transportation officials are still worried about what protesters will do. 
   
   The CIA pulled its top spy out of Pakistan in December 2010 after a Pakistani lawsuit accused him of killing civilians in drone strikes. The lawsuit listed a name lawyers said was the station chief, but the AP learned at the time it was not correct. Nevertheless, the CIA pulled out of the country after militants threatened to kill him. 
   
   It's rare for a CIA station chief to see his cover blown. In 1999, an Israeli newspaper revealed the identity of the station chief in Tel Aviv. In 2001, an Argentine newspaper printed a picture of the Buenos Aires station chief and details about him. In both instances, the station chiefs were recalled to the U.S. 
   
   The CIA's work is unusually difficult in Pakistan, one of the United States' most important and at times frustrating counterterrorism allies. 
   
   The station chief in Islamabad operates as a secret general in the U.S. war against terrorism. He runs the Predator drone program targeting terrorists, handles some of the CIA's most urgent and sensitive tips and collaborates closely with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency. 
   
   The CIA station chief who ran operations in Pakistan during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden left his post in 2011 due to illness, U.S. and Pakistani officials say. American officials said at the time that the station chief clashed with the U.S. ambassador in Pakistan, who objected to CIA drone strikes during diplomatic negotiations. 
   
   ___ 
   
   Associated Press writer Lara Jakes in Washington contributed to this report.
target: – A political party in Pakistan has publicly identified the top CIA spy in the country—and it wants him interrogated and put on trial over a recent US drone strike, reports the Guardian. The PTI party, notably led by a former cricket star named Imran Khan, identified the Islamabad station chief in a letter to police. It named him and CIA chief John Brennan as responsible for a drone strike earlier this month that killed civilians along with militants. Wire services are not naming the station chief. PTI officials say he doesn't have diplomatic immunity and therefore should be tried for murder, reports AP. They also say he should be interrogated to provide the names of the drone pilots who controlled the plane from afar. Assuming the identity is correct, it would be the second time in three years that those opposed to drone strikes in the country have identified a station chief. The first one had to leave the country in 2010.