Pakistani Gets Death for Slayings at CIA

A Pakistani was sentenced to death Friday for gunning down two CIA employees outside the gates of the spy agency.

“I don’t expect any justice or mercy from your country or this court,” Mir Aimal Kasi, 33, told Circuit Judge J. Howe Brown in his first statement since his arrest last June. The ambush was “the result of a wrong policy toward Muslim countries,” he said in a low voice.

The jury that convicted Kasi of murder on Nov. 10 recommended the death penalty. In Virginia, judges usually abide by a jury’s decision.

Kasi stopped his car on Jan. 25, 1993, near a traffic light outside the gates to the CIA in Langley and fired an AK-47 assault rifle through car windows, killing CIA communications worker Frank Darling, 28, and CIA analyst and physician Lansing Bennett, 66. Three other people were wounded.

Kasi left for Pakistan the next day and eluded a global manhunt for 4 1/2 years.

In letters to a freelance reporter last month, Kasi said he wanted to assassinate then-CIA Director R. James Woolsey or his predecessor, Robert M. Gates, but settled for the attack on commuters.

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“I wanted to shoot James Woolsey but was not able to find him,” the online newsmagazine Salon quoted Kasi as writing. “If I had found Gates, I would have attacked him, as these are people who make up policies for CIA or U.S. government.”

Kasi did not testify at his trial; his lawyers instead tried to save his life by arguing that he had brain damage and had an isolated and troubled childhood.

Brown rejected their arguments. “He planned this killing for several days. . . . He gave and gives political and religious reasons,” he said.

Brown scheduled the execution for Sept. 15, but postponement is likely because all death sentence cases are automatically appealed. Virginia executes its prisoners by lethal injection unless they choose the electric chair.

Richard Becker, Darling’s father-in-law, said the family will not involve itself in the appeals.

“It has been five years of hell, and I’m not getting any younger,” said Becker, 63. “For us, as far as we are concerned, this is over. The decision has been made.”

Becker’s daughter, Judy Becker Darling, also was a CIA employee and was in the car when her husband was shot. She has not returned to her job.

Security was tight for Kasi’s sentencing, as it was during his trial, with sharpshooters positioned on the courthouse roof and dogs sniffing for bombs.

The day after Kasi was convicted, four U.S. businessmen were shot to death in Pakistan, apparently in retaliation for the verdict.

The next day, jurors sent the judge a note asking about their safety, but it was not clear whether they knew about the attack in Pakistan.

They were then sequestered to shield them from the story.