CIA Shooting Suspect Said to Have Confessed

WASHINGTON — En route to the United States after his capture, Mir Aimal Kansi voluntarily signed a statement admitting that he shot five people four years ago outside the CIA’s Langley, Va., headquarters, sources familiar with the investigation said Thursday.

He told federal agents that his motive was his dismay over something done to his family in Pakistan by the U.S. government, the sources said. They declined to be more specific.

Kansi “felt like he did the right thing” by attacking the CIA, one of the sources said. To the surprise of the agents, Kansi appeared quite comfortable during the 22-hour flight on a U.S. C-141 military transport, often initiating conversations without prodding.

A source said Kansi recalled how many rounds he fired--police say it was 10--and that he then went to a park about a mile from CIA headquarters, where he waited a couple of hours for the scene to quiet down.

Kansi was advised of his legal rights, the sources said, and was told he had a right to an attorney before making any statement.

Since his arrest, officials have declined to speak publicly about Kansi’s motive. Among possible motives they have considered: avenging the death of a relative of the same last name whose assassination Kansi may have attributed to the CIA, or possibly anger over the plight of Bosnian Muslims.

The CIA was actively working in the area of Pakistan where Kansi’s family lives while supporting rebels in Afghanistan for many years after the Russian invasion of that country.

The CIA has denied that any of Kansi’s relatives were connected to the agency, although published accounts have suggested such links.

Kansi faces 10 state charges and a possible death penalty for the killing of two CIA employees and the wounding of three other people in the morning rush-hour attack on Jan. 25, 1993.

Robert F. Horan Jr., the Fairfax County, Va., commonwealth’s attorney, has said he will seek the death penalty in the case. He declined to comment on the existence of Kansi’s statement, but he said Kansi was “chatty” after his arrest.

It was unclear Thursday whether Horan will use the statement in the government’s case, in part because of the highly unusual circumstances of Kansi’s arrest.

According to U.S. sources, FBI agents arrested Kansi in a seedy hotel near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan and spirited him out of the region on military aircraft.

On Thursday, Majeed Nasir, the receptionist at the two-story Hotel Shalimar, located in the town of Dera Ghazi Khan in Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province, described a raid at 4 a.m. Sunday that mirrored the descriptions of Kansi’s capture given by senior FBI and CIA officials.

*

After Nasir’s account, two U.S. officials, requesting anonymity, indicated that the raid he described was indeed the one in which Kansi was captured--even though it occurred far from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. U.S. officials had hinted Wednesday that the raid occurred along the border without saying so explicitly.

Out of deference to Pakistan’s internal politics, no U.S. officials have publicly confirmed the raid occurred in that country.

The Shalimar Hotel is 210 miles east of Quetta, Kansi’s hometown in the border area where the hunt for him often was focused.

Horan also may believe he has enough evidence to build a strong case without using Kansi’s statement, which could open a courtroom debate on whether he understood his legal rights at the time.

Among that evidence is the Chinese-made AK-47-type assault rifle that police found in Kansi’s Reston apartment after the shootings.

The weapon was purchased by Kansi, according to court documents, and FBI forensic experts believe that the weapon fired the shell casings found at the scene. Kansi’s fingerprints also were found on the empty shell casings.

A spokeswoman for Kansi’s court-appointed attorney, Richard Goemann, said he would not comment on the case until Kansi’s next hearing in Fairfax Circuit Court on June 27. Until that time, Kansi, 33, is being held without bond in Fairfax County Jail.

If the prosecution does try to use Kansi’s statement in court, local criminal defense attorneys predicted Thursday that it will face a sharp challenge from his lawyer.

“Of all the things you can possibly attack, that is the most important,” said Francis D. Carter, former director of Washington’s Public Defenders Service.

“You ask whether he clearly understood the American system, and did he really have a choice in giving the statement.”

If Kansi’s statement is admitted in court, his attorneys may try an insanity defense, according to local lawyers.

Bernard S. Grimm, a Washington defense attorney who has tried more than 50 homicide cases, said if Kansi did sign a statement admitting the killings, “the only conceivable defense is insanity.”

At a court hearing Wednesday, Kansi told a judge that he had no money to hire an attorney.

In Kansi’s financial statement, which was released Thursday by the court and was used to establish that he was indigent, he said he owns real estate valued at $200,000 but has the equivalent of only $700 in cash.

He said he has been unemployed for four years in Pakistan, throughout the time that there has been an international manhunt for him.

Kansi listed his home as an address in Quetta, where he said he was living rent-free with 14 people, including “brothers and their wives and children.” He said he is not married.