Kasi, Mir Aimal (1964–)

aka Mir Kansi

In 1993, Mir Aimal Kasi, a Pakistani national, murdered two CIA employees outside the CIA [Page 201]headquarters in Langley, Virginia. He shot and permanently injured three other persons. Kasi was sentenced to death in 1998.

Born in 1964 to a wealthy family in Quetta, Pakistan, Kasi inherited about $100,000 after his father's death. Reportedly involved in a militant nationalist group in Pakistan, Kasi traveled to the United States in 1991, entering the country on a business visa. On January 25, 1993, Kasi stepped out of his car near the CIA gates in Langley. While morning commuters waited at a traffic light outside CIA headquarters, Kasi used an AK-47 assault rifle to shoot through car windows, walking between the lanes and spraying bullets left and right. Kasi first shot 28-year-old CIA communications worker Frank Darling in the back. Kasi also shot and killed 66-year-old CIA analyst and physician Lansing Bennett, and wounded three others.

Kasi fled to Pakistan the next day; he evaded capture for more than four years. He spent much of that time in Afghanistan. At first, the U.S. government did not label the CIA killings an act of international terrorism, reportedly to minimize problems with Pakistan. Judy Becker-Darling publicly spoke about what she saw as the CIA's indifference to her husband's death and became a gun control activist. Originally, the government offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to Kasi's capture, later raising the amount to $2 million.

On June 17, 1997, Kasi was arrested in a Punjab hotel room and then extradited to the United States, where he was tried in Virginia. Prosecutors in his trial said that his actions aimed to protest and take revenge for U.S. involvement in Muslim countries. Kasi did not testify at his trial but wrote a series of letters to a reporter at http://Salon.com, explaining that he had intended to assassinate CIA director James Woolsey or the former director Robert Gates.

The jury found Kasi guilty on November 10, 1997, and began deliberating its recommendation on his sentence. The next day, four auditors from the U.S. oil company Union Texas were shot, along with their Pakistani driver, in Karachi, Pakistan. Because the jury was still deliberating, jury members were sequestered to shield them from news of the Karachi shootings. The jury recommended the death penalty, and the judge sentenced Kasi to death on January 24, 1998.