Security tightened as Pakistani awaits execution in US
Aimal Khan Kasi, 38, is due to be executed in the US state at 2100 (0200 GMT today).
“Someone with national and even international credentials like this, it mandates that we take extra precautions,” said Colonel Gerald Massengill, head of the state police. He said it would be “inappropriate” to provide security details.
Hundreds of religious students have protested for days in Pakistan, calling the US the biggest terrorist of all and warning Americans in that country they won’t be safe if Kasi dies.
Kasi’s family said they have little hope he will be pardoned and are calling on their countrymen not to retaliate with violence if he is executed.
Kasi has an appeal pending with the US Supreme Court and a clemency petition is being considered by
Virginia Governor Mark Warner. The petition includes pleas from Kasi’s mother and Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi.
Some Pakistani politicians have pleaded with American officials to spare Kasi’s life, saying a commutation of the death sentence could “win the hearts of millions” and help the US in its war on terror.
Kasi has said he has no regrets about killing CIA communications worker Frank Darling, 28, and CIA analyst and Dr Lansing Bennett, 66, as they sat in their cars at a stoplight outside CIA headquarters in McLean, Virginia, in January 1993.
Three other men were wounded as Kasi walked along the row of cars, shooting into them with an AK-47 assault rifle.
Two days after his conviction, four American oil company workers were shot to death in Karachi, Pakistan.
A Virginia Department of Corrections spokesman declined to comment on security arrangements for the execution by injection.
