Suspected US security contractor Aaron Mark DeHaven arrested for not possessing valid travel documents has been granted bail by a Pakistani court, hours after another court extended his judicial remand till 18th March.

Additional Sessions Judge Altaf-ur-Rehman Monday accepted DeHaven’s bail application and issued his release order.

The judge ordered DeHaven to provide two personal surety bonds of Rs 20 lakh each.

Earlier in the day, Judicial Magistrate Qudratullah Marwat extended the judicial remand of American till March 18 after prosecutors informed the court that DeHaven’s records were tied up in the sessions court in connection with his bail application.

Legal experts said they believed DeHaven would be formally released from prison in a day or two following the completion of certain formalities.

Police arrested DeHaven last month from a residential area in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, on charges that he had outstayed his Pakistani visa, which expired in October last year.

Reports said he was running Catalyst Services, a firm providing security and accommodation to foreigners in northwest Pakistan.

An earlier bail plea by DeHaven, who is the second American to be arrested in recent past, was rejected last week and he had filed an appeal.

Relations between Pakistan and the US were strained in January following the arrest of suspected CIA contractor Raymond Davis, who was charged with murder for shooting and killing two armed men in Lahore.