A ruling against Mr. Davis, American officials said, could have set a precedent for other countries to deny C.I.A. operatives diplomatic protections.
The cyber-experts, who were accompanied by two operational support operatives, travelled on diplomatic passports with consecutive numbers under the names Aleksei Morenets and Evgenii Serebriakov.
It was about the 35 guys who were thrown out". He was referring to the expulsion by the Obama administration of 35 Russians it said were intelligence operatives using diplomatic cover.
De Sousa, an ex-CIA operative who operated under diplomatic cover, was initially acquitted due to diplomatic immunity, but was found guilty by Italy's highest court in 2014.
Given the military and Inter-Services Intelongence Directorate's long history of involvement in Pakistan's foreign policy, many wonder how Khar can make a difference, especially when her predecessor apparently lost his job for resisting diplomatic immunity for CIA operative Raymond Davis, who killed two Pakistanis in January.
Mr. Cowell was in Moscow under diplomatic cover as an operative for the Secret Intelligence Service of Britain, known as MI-6, in the early 1960's, when Colonel Penkovsky, a politically connected officer who became increasingly disillusioned with Communism, photographed thousands of secret Soviet documents with a tiny Minox camera.
In total, more than 150 Russian diplomats, many of whom are believed to be intelligence operatives working under diplomatic cover, have been expelled from two dozen countries.
The Ministry often provides diplomatic cover for both Hezbollah operatives and Iranian intelligence agents.
Mnuchin is the latest in a string of government leaders and Wall Street executives to drop out of the conference, dubbed "Davos in the Desert". Turkish investigators believe Khashoggi was killed by Saudi operatives inside a diplomatic compound in Istanbul.
In addition to hitting two Russian intelligence agencies, three companies and four individual intelligence officers with sanctions banning them from travel and business with U.S. companies or individuals, Obama ordered 35 Russian operatives posted at diplomatic facilities in Washington and San Francisco to leave.
