Mir Aimal Kansi

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Mir Aimal Kansi, from FBI, photo taken in 1991

Mir Aimal Kansi (Arabic: مير أيمال كانسي‎) (incorrectly referred to as Mir Amir Kansi; other names include Mir Amal Kanzi, Mir Amal Kansi, Mir Aimal Kasi) (February 10, 1964 - November 14, 2002) was a Muslim Pakistani citizen who spent four years on the United States Department of Justice's FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list after he shot five people with an AK-47, killing two, in their cars as they were turning towards the entrance to US CIA headquarters on January 25, 1993. He was captured in Pakistan more than four years later and following a trial, was executed by lethal injection in the state of Virginia, United States in 2002.

Kansi was a native of Quetta, a city on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to the FBI, he has also used the birthdates of October 22, 1964, and January 1, 1967. He was the son of a wealthy building contractor, and a member of the Pashtun tribe. He was well educated, earning a master's degree in English Literature from Baluchistan University in Quetta. He had previously worked with mujahedeen, Afghani guerrilla fighters, to transport US supplied weapons from military bases in Pakistan to Afghanistan. This was during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Kansi entered the United States in 1991 with fake papers that he bought in Karachi, Pakistan using the name Kansi. He lived in an apartment with a roommate, Zahed Mir, in Reston, Virginia, where he worked for Excel Courier Service making deliveries. He occasionally travelled to the CIA headquarters in this job. He bought the AK-47 from a Virginia gun dealer and began thinking of attacking the CIA headquarters. He knew that the line of cars that formed each day on Route 123 waiting to turn left onto a private road that led on to the grounds of the CIA headquarters mostly carried CIA employees.

On the morning of January 25, 1993, he drove his brown Datsun station wagon to the intersection and shot into several cars, killing two people (Frank Darling and Lansing H. Bennett) and injuring three others. He had the opportunity to kill two females but did not do so. Upon being asked why by the FBI, he said that it was because Islam forbade the killing of women. After the shooting, he was surprised that he was still alive and returned to his vehicle and fled the scene. He returned to his apartment and went to a convenience store where he purchased an airline ticket through the owner, who also owned a travel agency, and boarded the flight to Pakistan shortly thereafter.

He first returned to his hometown in Quetta, where he had family. Kansi had two brothers who were wealthy landowners. After a couple of days, without telling anyone in his family, Kansi disappeared across the border into Afghanistan.

He was identified as the prime suspect when his roommate filed a missing persons report on January 28, 1993 concerned about his unexplained absence. Police found the AK-47 in the apartment and matched it to shell casings found at the scene of the shootings. Kansi called his roommate on January 30, 1993 saying that "he had to leave in a hurry." The jacket found at the apartment had glass embedded into it from three cars that Kansi had shot into.

On February 9, 1993, The FBI named Kansi as the 435th fugitive to be added on their Top Ten Most Wanted List.^[1] The State Department offered a $2 million reward and later increased the reward to $3.5 million. After four and a half years, he was captured. A reliable informant gave the information as to his whereabouts and arranged for Kansi to be in the hotel where he was captured. On June 15, 1997, Kansi travelled to the town of Dera Ghazi Khan in central Pakistan as part of a business venture to import Russian electronics into Pakistan. He was captured in an early morning raid led by the FBI and transported to Fairfax, Virginia to stand trial. Kansi suspected that he was set up by his business partners to obtain the reward money offered by the United States.

He was never officially extradited from Pakistan, and US officials have never stated the country in which he was captured. However, some sources say the FBI received both the permission for his arrest in a hotel room, as well as the extradition papers after the arrest and a helicopter flight to Islamabad, Pakistan.

Although he pled not guilty at trial, he did not deny the acts. He was convicted and sentenced to death. He died by lethal injection in a Virginia state prison on November 14, 2002.

After his execution, hundreds of Kasi tribesmen and local community leaders poured into the family home in the Baluchistan capital Quetta to console his relatives. Some 2,000 extra police and paramilitary troops were patrolling at the time in anticipation of violence in Quetta, which has been rocked by almost daily protests in the lead-up to the execution.