Pakistan fears backlash for US execution of killer

Pakistan was bracing itself for a backlash over the execution in America of Aimal Khan Kansi, a Pakistani who admits murdering two CIA agents, and who said yesterday that he would do it again.

As the hour of his death by lethal injection drew closer – it was scheduled for 2am today, British time, the 38-year-old's only hope was a last-minute intervention from the Supreme Court or the Governor of the state of Virginia.

Yesterday, calm and composed, he gave an interview in his cell to the Urdu service of the BBC in which he sought to offer an explanation for mercilessly killing the two CIA men outside their headquarters with a Kalashnikov.

The crime had been to "register my objection to their foreign policy – their Middle East policy, specifically their pro-Israel policy, their anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian foreign policy," he told the interviewer. He would do it again; his only regret was that the Pakistani government had allowed him to be captured by American law enforcement agents in 1997, and to be flown back for trial to the US. He complained that was "in defiance of Pakistani and international laws".

The murders were committed on 25 January 1993. Kansi, a driver with a courier service, armed himself with an AK-47 rifle and opened fire outside CIA headquarters in Virginia.

He killed Lansing Bennett, a 66-year-old CIA intelligence analyst, and Frank Darling, 28, a CIA agent, and injured five other people.

Afterwards he flew to Quetta, his home city, crossed into the remote province of Baluchistan and later slipped into Afghanistan.

In the BBC interview, he admitted meeting and shaking hands with Osama bin Laden in the Afghan city of Kandahar, but said that they did not know one another. He said he was friendly with members of the Taliban, but denied links with al-Qa'ida.

He later returned to Pakistan, where he was picked up by FBI agents.

His pending execution has sparked angry protests in Pakistan. This is particularly the case in Baluchistan, where anti-US feelings and Muslim militancy entwine. Islamic and tribal leaders have been pressuring the Pakistani government to urge Washington to commute the sentence.

Security has been tightened around possible targets, in the hope of avoiding a repeat of the shootings and bombings that have killed Christians and Westerners since 11 September last year.

There have reportedly been several explicit threats of violence if the execution went ahead. One of these came on Monday in Punjab, when more than 200 people chanting anti-American slogans protested in the city of Multan. A statement was circulating, which spoke of "an extremely horrible reaction in the Islamic world".

The US State Department warned last week that Kansi's execution could trigger attacks on American or other foreign interests overseas.