World newsPakistan prepares for reprisals after Muslim killer is executed in Virginia
Pakistani police were on high alert yesterday after the execution in Virginia of a man whose ambush at CIA headquarters came to symbolise rising Muslim anger at the US.
Mir Aimal Kansi, 38, the son of a prominent family from Quetta, western Pakistan, was killed by lethal injection on Thursday night, nearly a decade after he shot dead two CIA employees and wounded three outside the agency's headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
His execution ends an episode that has inflamed Pakistani Muslims and generated fears of unrest, especially after Kansi was spirited away to America for trial in 1997. Four Americans were killed in Karachi after he was convicted; some hardliners have threatened further attacks.
"Another Pakistani has fallen victim on the altar of American subjugation," said Riaz Durrani of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, a hardline religious party.
Kansi's family, however, have appealed for calm. "We have asked the people in the past, and we will say it again, that they should not do any thing which hurts the country and the nation," his brother, Naseebullah Khan Kansi, said.
The sentence was carried out despite pleas for clemency from both the family and the Pakistani embassy. After a last meal of fried rice, bananas, and boiled eggs, Kansi was led into the chamber. He wore blue jeans, a short-sleeved shirt and sandals, and chanted as he passed through the door.
"His spiritual adviser also was chanting, kind of in a whispered chant," Larry Traylor, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections, said. It took three or four minutes for the poison to enter Kansi's veins and kill him.
"He appeared nervous. I'd say his breathing was a little laboured. When the first drug took effect, he did have a bit of a snore as he exhaled. That's not uncommon," Mr Traylor said. "Other than that, there were no complications."
The state department had warned his execution could prompt attacks against US and western interests - a possibility Kansi himself acknowledged before his execution.
"In Pakistan, a lot of people like me. So I believe there will be big chances for retaliation against Americans there. But personally, I don't encourage anyone to attack Americans," he said.
Nevertheless Kansi has said he had no regrets about the attack which he blamed on his growing anger and frustration at US policy towards the Palestinians.
On a cold winter morning, he strode up the road leading to the CIA headquarters pumping bullets from an AK-47 into cars queuing to get into the building.
He was on the run for more than four years before the FBI tracked him down on the Pakistani-Afghan border. Once formalities are complete, his family want the body to be brought back to Quetta for burial.
Yesterday, hundreds flocked to the family home in central Quetta to pay their respects.
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