1993 Shootings at CIA Headquarters - Capture and Rendition

Capture and Rendition

In May 1997, an informant walked into the U.S. consulate in Karachi and claimed he could help lead them to Kasi. As proof, he showed a copy of a driver's license application made by Kasi under a false name but bearing his photograph. Apparently, the people who had been sheltering Kasi were now prepared to accept the multi-million dollar reward offer for his capture. Other sources claim they were pressured by the Pakistani government. Kasi stated "I want to make it clear (that) the people who tricked me ... were Pushtuns, they were owners of land in the Leghari and Khosa clan areas in Dera Ghazi Khan, but I will never name them."

Kasi was in the Afghan border regions, so the informant was told to lure Kasi into Pakistan where he could be more easily apprehended. Kasi was tempted with a lucrative business offer—smuggling Russian electronic goods into Pakistan—which brought him to Dera Ghazi Khan, in the Punjab province of Pakistan, where he checked into a room at Shalimar Hotel.

At 4 am on the morning of June 15, 1997, an armed team of FBI agents, working with the Pakistani ISI, raided Kansi's hotel room. His fingerprints were taken on the scene, confirming his identity.

There is some dispute over where Kasi was taken next—US authorities claim it was a holding facility run by Pakistani authorities, while Pakistani sources claim it was the U.S. embassy in Islamabad – before being flown to the US on June 17 in a C-141 transport.

During the flight, Kasi made a full verbal and written confession to the FBI.

Kansi's extrajudicial rendition was controversial in Pakistan—no formal request for his extradition was made, and no extradition proceedings were initiated. US authorities would later assert that the rendition was legal under an extradition treaty signed with the UK, before Partition when India was under colonial rule. Kansi argued against his rendition in court but his assertions were found to have no basis in law. The Court wrote:

…the treaty between the United States and Pakistan contains no provision that bars forcible abductions, nor does it otherwise 'purport to specify the only way in which one country may gain custody of a national of the other country for the purposes of prosecution.' Id. at 664 (emphasis added). Nor does the treaty provide that, once a request for extradition is made, the procedures outlined in the treaty become the sole means of transferring custody of a suspected criminal from one country to the other. Finally, because Kansi was not returned to the United States via extradition proceedings initiated under the Extradition Treaty between the United States and Pakistan, Kansi's reliance upon United States v. Rauscher does not avail him.