CIA SLAYINGS SUSPECT RETURNS TO PAKISTAN, DISAPPEARS

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, February 12, 1993                   TAG: 9302120010
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: QUETTA, PAKISTAN                                LENGTH: Medium
CIA SLAYINGS SUSPECT RETURNS TO PAKISTAN, DISAPPEARS
A 28-year-old Pakistani wanted by the United States quietly slipped back into the country, then disappeared just before he was accused of murdering two CIA employees in Virginia, relatives said Thursday.
The Pakistani government promised to track down the suspect, Mir Aimal Kansi, and extradite him to the United States for trial. But family members and friends insisted he was innocent.
Kansi was charged Tuesday with capital murder in the Jan. 25 deaths of Lansing H. Bennett, 66, and Frank Darling, 28, both CIA employees. Two other agency employees and a third man were wounded when a gunman shot point-blank into cars waiting at a stoplight to turn into the agency's headquarters.
Fairfax County Police Chief Michael Young said there was no known motive for the shootings at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va.
Kansi had been living in the United States since early 1991 and last worked as a courier for the son of a former high-ranking CIA agent who became an outspoken critic of the agency. The courier service made deliveries to CIA headquarters, but Kansi was not cleared to enter the CIA compound.
He was implicated in the attack after a man with the surname Kansi bought an airline ticket from Washington to Pakistan the day after the shootings. A Chinese-made AK-47 assault rifle found Monday in his Reston, Va., apartment was identified as the murder weapon, and fingerprints found on shell casings at the shooting scene matched those in his immigration files, officials said.
Family members said he came back about 2 1/2 weeks ago to Quetta, his hometown in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, but left on Sunday, saying he was going back to the United States, family sources said.
Pakistani intelligence and other law enforcement officers suspect he may have slipped across the border into Afghanistan or Iran.
An FBI team was expected in Pakistan next week to coordinate the search with the government, Interior Minister Shujaat Hussein said.
Hussein said Pakistan was prepared to turn Kansi over to U.S. authorities, and in Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said an extradition treaty with Pakistan "would apply to this case."
Hussein and others denied any connection between Kansi and a Pakistani politician with the same last name killed in 1984. They said Gul Hasan Kansi, a member of the martial law government of former dictator Gen. Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, was killed by a nephew in a land dispute.
Pakistan's English- and Urdu-language newspapers carried short front-page stories about the search for Kansi. But the stories have generated little interest in Pakistan, where the CIA often is blamed for all the country's ills.
Kansi's family has vast land holdings and owns several construction firms, and is one of the wealthiest in Baluchistan, an arid, largely tribal territory.
According to Kansi's friends, he earned a master's degree in English literature from Baluchistan University in Quetta. He was considered a sympathizer of the Awami National Party, a small, socialist party concentrated in northern Pakistan and parts of Baluchistan.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB