By Asif Farooqi, IOL Pakistan Correspondent

ISLAMABAD, November 14 (IslamOnline) - Countrywide security alert was issued Wednesday, November 13, as elders of the Kasi tribe were preparing for his burial at a village in the remote Balushistan province. A clemency appeal against the execution of Mir Aimal Kasi, alleged murderer of three CIA agents in the United States, seemed futile.

Kasi is scheduled to be executed on Thursday by lethal injection in a correction center at Jarratt, state if Virginia, where he was tried for allegedly murdering two CIA agents in 1993. Kasi was arrested in Pakistan in an FBI raid on a local hotel on the border of his home province in 1997 and was immediately shifted to the Untied States in violation of local Pakistani laws. On November 10, 1997, six months after his arrest, Kasi was sentenced to death by a jury in Fairfax, Virginia.

The family of Mir Aimal Kasi has made clemency appeals to the US Supreme Court and to the Virginia Governor Mark Warner. But with his execution less than 36 hours away, there was still no word from the authorities on whether they were even considering his appeals for pardon or turning his death sentence to life imprisonment.

The State Department issued a general warning against revenge attacks following the execution, in Pakistan and possibly in other parts of the world against U.S. interests.

The government in Pakistan also issued severe security instructions, especially for the Province of Baluchistan, where Kasi is known as a respected and powerful tribe. The decision to bring the body of the “martyr” back to his home by the tribal elders and his planned burial at a tribal cemetery, spread panic in the security circles in the country. Government security agencies believe that the government's refusal to file an official clemency appeal with the U.S. government at the request of the Kasi tribe, spread unrest among the tribe and other Islamists who have soft corner for Aimal Kasi.

Some parts of the country saw anti-government protests over this week when the government turned a deaf ear to a joint appeal from many religious groups asking for the extradition of Mir Aimal Kasi to Pakistan.

Family members of Mr. Kasi now feel that the U.S. authorities are not likely to approve their clemency appeals. Elder brothers of Kasi traveled to the U.S. to possibly receive his body.

In his last communication with one of his close friends in Pakistan Kasi rejected the murder charge against him. Kasi said in a letter to his friend last week that he was being punished only because he was a Muslim and was not ready to bow to the Zionist beliefs which were thrust upon him when he was employed in a company in the States in early 1990s.

Kasi, 38, was convicted of the double murder of two Central Intelligence Agency employees outside the CIA's headquarters in Langley, Virginia, in an attack that injured three other people.

Kasi reportedly waited for his victims, following their vehicle from CIA headquarters. At the first red stop light Kansi went up to them with an AK-47 assault rifle, killing both men and wounding three other people.

The victims, Lansing Bennet and Frank Darling, were assigned to tasks involving covert operations, the Washington Post reported at the time.

Kasi left the United States the next day on a scheduled flight to Karachi.

He became the most wanted man on the FBI list, with a two million-dollar price tag on his head.

It was unclear whom Kasi had been working for: whether he was an agent employed by Tehran, or maybe even a former CIA agent let down by his patrons, and on whom he sought revenge.

Another question also went unanswered: how Kasi managed to leave the United States on an out-of-date Pakistani passport that expired in March 1992 and had not been renewed.

Investigators determined that he arrived in the United States in March 1991 with a business visa on his Pakistani passport, and found work at a transport company owned by the son of a former assistant to late CIA director Richard Helms.