- Aimal Qazi
-
Mir Aimal Kasi 
FBI photo of Mir Aimal KasiBorn 10 February 1964 (or 1 January 1967)
Quetta, PakistanDied November 14, 2002
Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Virginia, United StatesNationality Pakistani Religion Islam Criminal penalty Execution by lethal injection Aimal Qazi (Arabic: مير أيمال كانسي), also known as Mir Aimal Kasi, was a Pakistani assailant involved in the 1993 shootings at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. In the incident, Kasi killed two CIA employees and wounded another three before escaping to Pakistan.
Contents
Background
Qazi was born on either 10 February 1964 or 1 January 1967 in Quetta, Pakistan.[1] He entered the United States in 1991, taking a substantial sum of cash he had inherited on the death of his father in 1989. He travelled on forged papers he had purchased in Karachi, Pakistan, altering his name to "Kansi", and later bought a fake green card in Miami, Florida.[2]
He stayed with a Kashmiri friend, Zahed Mir,[3] in his Reston, Virginia apartment, and invested in a courier firm for which he also worked as a driver.[4] This work would be decisive in his choice of target: "I used to pass this area almost every day and knew these two left-turning lanes [were] mostly people who work for CIA."[2]
According to Kasi, his first thoughts of an attack came after the purchase of an AK-47 from a Chantilly gun store. The plan soon became "more important than any other thing to [him]."[2]
Shootings
Main article: 1993 shootings at CIA HeadquartersOn January 25, 1993, Kasi stopped a borrowed brown Datsun station wagon[5] behind a number of vehicles waiting at a red traffic light on the eastbound side of Route 123, Fairfax County.[6] The vehicles were waiting to make a left turn into the main entrance of CIA headquarters. Kasi emerged from his vehicle with his AK-47 type semi-automatic rifle and proceeded to move among the lines of vehicles, firing a total of 10 rounds into them,[7] killing Lansing H. Bennett, 66, and Frank Darling, 28. Three others were left with gunshot wounds.[4] Darling was shot first and later received additional gunshot wounds to the head after Kasi shot the other victims.
Kasi climbed back into his vehicle and drove to a nearby park. After 90 minutes of waiting, it became clear that he was not being actively sought and so he drove back to his Reston apartment.[4] He hid the rifle in a green plastic bag under a sofa, went to a McDonald's for something to eat, and booked himself into a Days Inn for the night. The CNN news reports he watched made it clear that police had misidentified his vehicle and did not have his license plate number.[3] The next morning, he took a flight to Quetta, Pakistan. According to Kansi, he killed American CIA people because, "I was real angry with the policy of the U.S. government in the Middle East, particularly toward the Palestinian people," Kansi said in a prison interview with CNN affiliate WTTG.[8]
On February 16, 1993, Kasi, then a fugitive, had been charged in absentia. The charges involved capital murder of Darling, murder of Bennett, and three counts of malicious wounding for the other victims, along with related firearms charges.
Capture and rendition
In May 1997, an informant walked into the U.S. consulate in Karachi and claimed he could help lead them to Kasi. As proof, he showed a copy of a driver license application made by Kasi under a false name but bearing his photograph. Apparently, the people who had been sheltering Kasi were now prepared to accept the multi-million dollar reward offer for his capture. Kasi stated "I want to make it clear (that) the people who tricked me ... were Pushtuns, they were owners of land in the Leghari and Khosa clan areas in Dera Ghazi Khan, but I will never name them."[9]
Kasi was in the dangerous Durand Line border region, so the informant was told to lure Kasi into Pakistan where he could be more easily apprehended. Kasi was tempted with a lucrative business offer—smuggling Russian electronic goods into Pakistan—which brought him to Dera Ghazi Khan, in the Punjab province of Pakistan, where he checked into a room at Shalimar Hotel.[9]
At 4 a.m. on the morning of June 15, 1997, an armed team of FBI agents, working with the Pakistani ISI, raided Kasi's hotel room. His fingerprints were taken on the scene, confirming his identity.
There is some dispute over where Kasi was taken next—US authorities claim it was a holding facility run by Pakistani authorities,[4] while Pakistani sources claim it was the U.S. embassy in Islamabad[9] — before being flown to the US on June 17 in a C-141 transport.[4][10] During the flight, Kasi made a full oral and written confession to the FBI.[4]
Trial
During the trial the defense introduced testimony from Dr. Richard Restak a neurologist and also a neuropsychiatrist, that Kasi was missing tissue from his frontal lobes, a congenital defect that made it hard for him to judge the consequence of his actions. This testimony was re-iterated by another psychiatrist for the defense based upon independent examination.
Kasi was tried by a Virginia state court jury over a period of ten days in November 1997, on a plea of not guilty to all charges. The jury found him guilty, and fixed punishment for the capital murder charge at death.[4] On February 4, 1998, Kasi was sentenced to death for the capital murder of Darling, who was shot at the beginning of the attack and again after the other victims had been shot. Among his other punishments were a life sentence for the first-degree murder of Bennett, multiple 20-year sentences for the malicious woundings, and fines totalling $600,000.[4]
Execution and burial
Kasi was executed by lethal injection on November 14, 2002, at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Virginia.[11] Kasi's body was repatriated to Pakistan, his funeral was attended by the entire civil hierarchy of Balochistan, the local Pakistan Army Corps Commander and the Pakistani Ambassador to the United States, Ashraf Jahangir Qazi.[12]
See also
- Farooque Ahmed, Pakistani American arrested for plotting bombing of Washington Metro
- David Headley, Chicago-based Pakistani-American, and half-brother of Pakistani Prime Minister's spokesman, made contact with al-Qaeda during trips to Waziristan and conspired with Lashkar-e-Taiba and Pakistani ex-military officers to launch the 2008 Mumbai attacks and other terrorist activity
- Operation Arabian Knight, 2010 arrest of two Muslim men from New Jersey on terrorism charges
- Faisal Shahzad – convicted Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan operative sentenced to life in prison for 2010 Times Square car bombing attempt
- Aafia Siddiqui, U.S.-educated Pakistani alleged al-Qaeda member, arrested in Afghanistan with bomb-making documents and convicted in February 2010 of attempted murder and armed assault
- Najibullah Zazi, U.S. resident and al-Qaeda member, pleaded guilty in 2010 of planning suicide bombings of New York City subway
References
- ^ "Mir Aimal Kansi". FBI. web.archives.org. October 22, 1996. http://web.archive.org/web/19961022211412/http://www.fbi.gov/mostwant/kansinfo.htm. Retrieved 2011-07-31.
- ^ a b c Stein, J. "Convicted assassin: 'I wanted to shoot the CIA director'", Salon.com, January 22, 1998.
- ^ a b Davis, P. & Glod, M. "CIA Shooter Kansi, Harbinger of Terror, Set to Die Tonight", Washington Post, November 14, 2002.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Justice A. Christian Compton, Virginia Supreme Court Opinion on Mir Aimal Kansi, November 6, 1998.
- ^ Bill Miller. "Gunsmith Says Tip on Kansi Went Unheeded; ATF Disputes Employee's Account", Washington Post, Feb. 12, 1993
- ^ Steve Coll, "Ghost Wars", New York: Penguin Books, 2004, pp. 246-247
- ^ Benjamin, Daniel & Steven Simon. "The Age of Sacred Terror", 2002
- ^ ARCHIVES CNN Pakistani man executed for CIA killings November 15, 2002
- ^ a b c Hasan, K. "How Aimal Kasi was betrayed", Daily Times (Pakistan), June 23, 2004.
- ^ Khan, R. "In search of truth", DAWN, November 24, 2002.
- ^ Glod, M. & Weiss, E. "Kansi Executed For CIA Slayings, Washington Post, November 15, 2002.
- ^ "Pakistan's Foreign Policy Predicaments Post 9/11", South Asia Analyst Group, Paper No. 564, December 12, 2002
External links
Categories:- 1964 births
- 1967 births
- 2002 deaths
- Islamist terrorism in the United States
- People from Quetta
- People executed by lethal injection
- Pakistani people executed abroad
- People executed by Virginia
- Pakistani Islamists
- Prisoners and detainees of the United States federal government
- University of Balochistan alumni
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