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Supreme Court Rejects Pakistani's Appeal Against Death Penalty for Killing CIA Agents

A P Kamath in Washington

Former fugitive Mir Aimal Kasi, 35, found guilty in the shooting of two Central Intelligence Agency employees six years ago, lost yet another bid on June 24 to save his life.

The nation's highest court rejected unanimously and without comment his appeal against his seizure by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in Pakistan after a four-year long global hunt and posting a $1 million reward.

Kasi's lawyers argued that his arrest in a hotel in his home country violated the American Constitution's ban on unreasonable arrests.

They also said that Virginia courts failed to compel the government to produce evidence that weighed in Kasi's favor. During the first trial the defense attorney Judith Barger had argued that Kasi was a brain-damaged loner whose rampage was senseless. The jury decision to execute Kasi came two days after four American oil company auditors were shot to death in Pakistan in retaliation for his conviction

During the Supreme Court hearing, Virginia Attorney General Mark L Earley this week urged the Supreme Court to reject Kasi's appeal, saying the justices ruled in 1990 that government agents' cannot be restrained from acting against non-citizens outside the United States.

While a national alert went out for Kasi, the FBI received tips allegedly from fellow Pakistanis that he had returned to Pakistan.

Firearms dealers were canvassed to develop purchaser leads. On February 8, 1993, an FBI agent following one of those leads learned that Kasi had purchased a Norinco AK-47. Kasi's roommate allowed a search of his apartment. A Norinco AK-47 was found under a couch. Forensic tests determined that the bullets from the victims and cartridge cases found at the Langley crime scene came from that assault rifle.

The FBI's Latent Fingerprint Section identified latent fingerprints on two cartridge cases found at the crime scene with Mir Aimal Kasi.

He is also known as Mir Aimal Kansi, Aimal Khan and Mohammad Alam Kasi.

FBI agents say Kasi owned up to the slayings during the return flight.

Kasi, who worked as a driver for a courier company near the CIA headquarters in Langley in Virginia, was angry over America's policy against Iraq, Libya and a few other Muslim countries, according to his confessions. He opened fire with an AK-47 assault rifle outside CIA headquarters in Virginia on January 25, 1993, killing CIA employees Frank Darling and Lansing Bennett who were sitting in their cars at a red light, and wounding three others. He had bought the weapon three days before the killings, officials say.

Officials believe Kasi randomly shot the men. After his arrest he said he had planned to shoot CIA and Israeli officials but he chose the former because they were not armed. He also said he chose to shoot only men because killing women was against Islam. He wanted to shoot the CIA bosses, he said in the court, but he found it difficult to get near them.

He was tried and convicted in a Virginia state court in November 1997, and was sentenced to death. The Virginia Supreme Court upheld his convictions and sentence seven months ago.

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