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Statement of Attorney General Jerry Kilgore
"I am very pleased that a three-judge panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the death sentence of Mir Aimal Kasi, the Pakistani terrorist who killed two people and wounded three others outside CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia in 1993.
"We live in a nation of laws, not terror. Our Commonwealth was the site of one of the cowardly attacks of September 11th, but today it is the site of yet another triumph of our criminal justice system. America is engaged in a difficult war against an elusive enemy, but our court system has struck a blow for our way of life. The rest of the terrorist world must know that we will severely punish those who engage in such acts of violent cowardice.
"No court decision can ever heal the wounds of the families of the victims, but I am nevertheless grateful to the three judges from the 4th Circuit."
For Release: August 15, 2002
Website: www.vaag.com
Contact: Tim Murtaugh or Randy Davis
Phone: (804) 786-3518 or (804) 786-4596
Kasi hailed as martyr while Pakistan braces for execution backlash
QUETTA, PAKISTAN, NOV 15
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"He is a martyr. His smiling face is still in front of me," Naseebullah Kasi, told AFP, as he expressed shock that the execution went ahead.
"It was coming and I had little hope that the Supreme Court would stay his execution, but still the news was shocking," he said.
The US Supreme Court rejected a last-minute appeal for a stay of execution and the governor of Virginia state, where the execution took place, refused Kasi's request for clemency.
Kasi, who comes from a powerful tribe in Pakistan's south-west desert province of Baluchistan, was killed by lethal injection in a Virginia jail and was pronounced dead at 0207 GMT Friday, just after 7:00 am local time.
Hundreds of Kasi tribesmen and local community leaders poured into the family home in the Baluchistan capital Quetta to console his relatives, said a cousin who asked not to be named.
Some 2,000 extra police and paramilitary troops were patrolling Quetta, which has been rocked by almost daily protests this week in the lead-up to the execution.
"Around 2,000 extra personnel have been posted in the city. We are on high alert, but so far the city is peaceful," Baluchistan police chief Shoaib Suddle told AFP.
"The tribesmen have called a strike. A group of people tried to force the shopkeepers to pull their shutters down."
Kasi in an interview broadcast shortly before his death urged his compatriots and other Muslims not to attack US citizens to avenge his execution.
"I don't want that anybody should attack, like Americans, in Pakistan or any other Muslim country," he said in a taped interview with NBC News.
Quetta-based tribal leader Arbab Zahir Kasi also called for peace.
"We will feel sorry if there is any damage, even minor, to any person by anyone over this.
"The Kasi tribe, we are very peaceful and we already have asked the people not to express their reaction through violence."
However, he warned that the execution would inflame anti-American feelings among Muslims.
"The Americans have proved their anti-Muslim stance. This act will increase anti-American feelings among the Muslim world," he said.
In the Punjab city of Multan around a hundred activists demonstrated to condemn the execution, wielding placards with slogans such as "Bush the biggest terrorist" and "Martyrs never die".
"The execution of Aimal Kansi has saddened the Pakistani nation and this act might be harmful to the United States itself," Pir Abdul Raziq Quddosi warned.
Hundreds of police and paramilitary troops were also patrolling the volatile southern port city of Karachi, where two suicide car bomb blasts outside the US consulate and the Sheraton hotel killed 26 people earlier this year, including 11 French nationals.
Police chief of southern Sindh province, Syed Kamal Shah, said the city's forces were on alert.
BUS-BOMB "Two people have been killed and between seven and nine people injured," Sindh province home affairs secretary Brigadier Mukhtar Sheikh told AFP. Hyderabad police chief Rauf Yusufzai said the blast appeared to have been caused by a time bomb. The explosion occurred at around 9:40 am (0440 GMT), as security authorities braced for angry reactions to the execution in the US hours earlier of a Pakistani convicted of murdering two CIA agents in 1993. Police said they were investigating whether the blast was linked to Mir Aimal Kasi's execution, but there was no immediate proof of a link. "We cannot rule out the possibility that it could be in reaction to Aimal Kasi's execution, but there are other possibilities also," Yusufzai told reporters in Hyderabad, 160 kilometers (100 miles) northwest of the commercial port city Karachi. State-run media reported that the device, weighing around one pound (454 grams) and locally made, was wrapped in a plastic shopping bag and left lying abandoned on a front seat of the bus. A bus cleaner had accidentally detonated the bomb by picking it up, killing him and one other onboard passenger and injuring nine, the Associated Press of Pakistan reported, citing police and bomb disposal workers. Witnesses said the blast was loud enough to bring people out from nearby offices. "The blast took place in a moving bus," newspaper hawker Mohammad Ilyas who was standing near the bus told reporters. Sheikh said the blast "could or could not be" a reaction to Kasi's death. "We are investigating. There have been bomb blasts in the past in Hyderabad," he said. US citizens in Pakistan have been ordered to be extra-cautious by their embassy, and the embassy and consulates were closed earlier than usual after remaining open Friday morning, an embassy spokesman said. Islamic party leaders who won seats in the new parliament condemned the execution. "It will not help the international war against terrorism," head of the hardline Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) party and one of two prime ministerial candidates, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, told AFP. "If he had done any crime he should have been tried and punished here," he said.
By TIM MCGLONE, The Virginian-Pilot
International appeals to Gov. Mark R. Warner and President Bush have
emphasized the potential for attacks if the execution goes forward.
It's unlikely, however, that Kasi's life will be spared through those
avenues. Virginia hasn't bowed to international pressure before, including
efforts by the pope and Mother Teresa prior to past executions.
Attorney General Jerry Kilgore made his position clear in this recent
terse warning: ``The rest of the terrorist world must know that we will
severely punish those who engage in such acts of violent cowardice.''
Kasi, 38, has been on death row since his conviction in 1997 for the
murders of CIA employees Frank A. Darling, 28, and Lansing H. Bennett, 66,
as they sat at a stoplight outside CIA headquarters in McLean in 1993.
Three others were wounded as Kasi walked along, firing indiscriminately.
FBI agents kidnapped Kasi from a Pakistan hotel room four years later and
shipped him to Northern Virginia for trial.
Kasi, a Muslim, has said that he committed the killings in retaliation for
U.S. Middle East policy and its support of Israel. He said he is not
affiliated with any terrorist group.
In an interview with The Associated Press last week, he condemned the
attacks on the World Trade Center but supported the attack on the
Pentagon. He also had mixed feelings about his crimes.
``I'm not sorry for attacking the CIA,'' he said. ``You know, I feel sorry
and sad for the families of the victims. I don't say that I feel happy or
proud for it.''
He also said he does not support retaliation for his execution.
The State Department last week issued a worldwide warning of possible
attacks on Americans overseas. Security has been increased around
government buildings in Pakistan and elsewhere.
``As security is increased at official U.S. facilities, terrorists and
their sympathizers will seek softer targets,'' the State Department
warning said.
The Pakistani press also reported fears of reprisals.
``The government is afraid that people may take to the streets and stir up
trouble when the U.S. executes Kasi,'' reported Monday's Daily Balochistan
Express. The paper printed a half-page editorial calling for clemency.
The warnings might have merit.
Four days after Kasi was convicted, four U.S. oil workers were gunned down
in Karachi, Pakistan, in what was believed to be retaliation for the death
sentence.
But Warner's office said Monday that no ``credible or specific'' threats
have been received.
Ellen Qualls, spokeswoman for the governor, said Warner and his staff are
reviewing the clemency petition just as they routinely do and will decide
on its merit once the U.S. Supreme Court rules this week on recent
filings.
Others in the Pakistan media called for Kasi's return to his native
country to face charges there instead. Pakistani officials including the
ambassador to the United States also urged clemency.
Previous appeals from the international community did not stop the
executions of Derek R. Barnabei in 2000 and Joseph O'Dell three years
earlier.
Also, appeals by the International Court of Justice and foreign diplomats
couldn't stop the 1997 execution of Angel Francisco Breard of Paraguay.
The Mexican government also failed to stop the 1998 execution of Mario
Murphy, a Mexican citizen convicted in Virginia Beach.
Kasi's Virginia Beach lawyer, Charles R. Burke, said he's hoping the U.S.
Supreme Court will halt the execution. Burke argues in papers to the court
that Kasi's arrest violated U.S. law and a treaty with Pakistan. He also
says the federal government withheld some 14,000 pages of documents that
could have helped his case.
Burke said material obtained through the Freedom of Information Act
revealed that the United States filed extradition papers with Pakistan
before Kasi was kidnapped. That information was not presented at trial, or
through Kasi's initial appeals.
The government was obligated to follow extradition procedures once it
filed the papers, he said. That would have involved a court hearing in
Pakistan and likely would have led to a deal to return Kasi for
prosecution as long as the death penalty was not sought, Burke argues.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed those claims in August.
Reach Tim McGlone at tmcglone@pilotonline.com or 446-2343.
Copyright 1993-2002, HamptonRoads.com / PilotOnline.com
Related articles, click here.
http://www.sullivan-county.com/
Updated 7/21/07
An explosion on a passenger bus in Pakistan's southern city of Hyderabad killed two Pakistanis early Friday, officials and a local aid worker said.
Execution in Va. carries fear of retaliation
© November 12, 2002
Fears of retaliatory strikes against Americans are mounting as Thursday's
scheduled execution of a Pakistani national draws near.
Virginia has been thrust into the worldwide spotlight as it prepares for
the execution of Aimal Khan Kasi, who murdered two CIA employees and
wounded three others in 1993.
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