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Pakistani Protesters Demonstrate Against US Execution of Kasi - 2002-11-12


Hundreds of Islamic activists have staged more protests in Pakistan against Thursday's scheduled U-S execution of a Pakistani man convicted of killing two C-I-A employees in 1993.

The activists from Pakistan's hardline Jamaat-e-Islami party marched in Multan town in Punjab province and threatened violence if Mir Aimal Kasi is executed. About 200 people held a similar protest in the town on Monday.

Kasi's 61-year-old mother and Human Rights group Amnesty International appealed for clemency to the governor of the U-S state of Virginia, where Kasi is set to be put to death by lethal injection. He killed the two men outside the CIA headquarters in Virginia.

Kasi -- also known in Pakistan as Mir Aimal Kansi -- fled there after the killings and was arrested in 1997 by U-S and Pakistani agents who sent him to the United States for trial (in Virginia).

In a new report, Amnesty International says that U-S intelligence agents and Pakistan's government colluded to abduct Kasi from Punjab province in Pakistan in 1997.

The rights group says that since Pakistan and the United States joined forces for the U-S led war on terrorism, hundreds of Pakistanis have been turned over to U-S authorities. Amnesty says it fears that many of them may also be tried and sentenced to death.

Kasi belongs to the powerful Kansi tribe in the southwestern province of Baluchistan. The province -- bordering Afghanistan -- is a stronghold of hard-line Islamic groups which made major gains in Pakistani elections last month.

Tribal head Arbab Zahir Kansi has sent a written appeal to the U-S Justice Department, asking it to pardon Kasi or commute the death sentence.

Some Pakistani political leaders are joining them in demanding Washington return Kasi to Pakistan for trial.

The U-S State Department has warned that the execution could result in retaliation against Americans around the world.

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