Mir Kasi was executed by the State of Virginia for two murders
According to court documents Mir Kasi would go to the area of the CIA headquarters during morning rush hour. Kasi would began shooting at the cars in an intersection killing Frank Darling, 28, and Lansing Bennett, 66. Three other people would be injured. Kasi would flee the country and would be arrested four years later in Pakistan
Mir Kasi would be convicted and sentenced to death
Mir Kasi would be executed on November 14 2002 by lethal injection
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When Was Mir Kasi Executed
Mir Kasi was executed on November 14 2002
Mir Kasi Case
Mir Aimal Kasi, a Pakistani who killed two CIA employees in 1993 in a rage over American policy in the Middle East, was executed by lethal injection on Thursday, in a case that sparked protests in his homeland and fears of retaliation against U.S. interests. Kasi, 38, was pronounced dead at 9:07 p.m. EST (0207 GMT) at the Greensville Correctional Center in southeast Virginia, said Larry Traylor, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections.
Kasi looked sad as he entered the death chamber, witnesses said. Kasi’s spiritual adviser Dr. Miah Muhammed Saeed, president of the Islamic Center in northern Virginia, accompanied him into the death chamber. The two men appeared to be praying quietly but continuously until Kasi’s death. His last words were, “There is no God but Allah,” said Traylor.
On January 25, 1993, Kasi, also known in Pakistan as Kansi, parked his pickup truck near CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, during the morning rush hour, picked up an AK-47 and began methodically shooting into cars at a stoplight. Two people were killed and three wounded before he got back into his truck and left the scene unhindered. He flew to Pakistan the next day but was arrested in 1997, convicted and sentenced to die.
The U.S. State Department last week issued a warning to Americans abroad. Four Americans were killed in Pakistan after Kasi’s 1997 conviction, and threats were made in Pakistan in recent days to harm Americans if Kasi was executed. But Kasi, who was not believed to have had any links with terrorist organizations, let it be known through his lawyers that he “does not want anybody hurt in his name or as a result of his execution.” As a precaution, however, the Virginia State Police said heightened security was provided at the prison and at the state capitol in Richmond.
ANGRY AT U.S. TREATMENT OF MUSLIMS
An FBI agent testified that Kasi confessed he wanted to punish the U.S. government for bombing Iraq, for what he saw as its involvement in the killing of Palestinians and because the CIA was too deeply involved in the internal affairs of Muslim countries. Protesters in Pakistan said Kasi’s actions were understandable. “Aimal is not a terrorist,” tribal elder Ibrahim Kansi told demonstrators. “His action was a reaction to what was happening to Muslims in Chechnya and Palestine.” The U.S. Supreme Court turned down Kasi’s latest appeal Thursday. And Virginia Gov. Mark Warner denied a clemency request from Kasi’s stepmother and the Pakistani embassy.
He was sentenced to die for the killings of CIA employees Frank Darling, 28, and Lansing Bennett, 66. Three other people, two with the CIA and a telephone company employee, were wounded in Kasi’s rampage. He fired 11 bullets into five cars. Darling’s father-in-law, Richard Becker, whose daughter was in the car when her husband was murdered, issued a statement on behalf of his family. “The justice system of the United States and the State of Virginia performed and have been heard. On Thursday, we will spend time in prayer for Kasi, that God will have mercy on his soul, for his family, that there be no terrorism reprisal, and for world peace,” it said. CIA Director George Tenet said in a statement: “Today, our thoughts are with our two colleagues who were murdered on January 25, 1993, as well as the three others who were wounded that day. They and their loved ones will always be part of our agency family. They will remain in our thoughts and prayers long after today.”
PROTESTS IN PAKISTAN
About 150 members of Kasi’s tribe in Pakistan marched through the streets of Kasi’s hometown of Quetta, not far from the border with Afghanistan, chanting “Aimal is our hero.” The demonstrators also burned a U.S. flag. Other activists protested in the central town of Multan and called for the sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment. Iqbal Jafree, a Pakistani lawyer who had attempted to assist in the post-trial appeals, said Kasi’s family had picked out a grave for Kasi in his hometown of Quetta. Defence witnesses contended Kasi suffered from brain damage and mental illness, and should have received life in prison instead of the death sentence.
Mir Kasi had been living in Reston, Virginia. He flew to Pakistan the day after the shootings and disappeared for four years. Authorities said he spent most of that time in Afghanistan, hiding in and around Kandahar, which later emerged as a stronghold of the militant Taliban movement linked to Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network. The FBI arrested Kasi in his hotel room in central Pakistan on June 15, 1997, and brought him to the United States for trial. Kasi’s brother, Naseebullah Khan, told Reuters that Kasi had called home on Thursday. “He asked his mother to have courage,” Khan said. “He told her to give his wishes to the motherland and to the people of Pakistan and asked them to pray for him.”
Kasi requested a last meal of fried rice, bananas, boiled eggs and wheat bread. He was the 4th person executed in Virginia this year and the 87th executed in Virginia since the death penalty was allowed to resume by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976.
http://asia.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=topnews&StoryID=1743550
