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Killer befriended his captor
JARRAT, Virginia (CNN) -- Almost a decade after he went on a shooting rampage outside CIA headquarters, Mir Aimal Kasi was put to death Thursday for killing two CIA employees. Brad Garrett, the FBI agent who led a four-year manhunt for Kasi, had stayed in touch with him, and attended his execution. Over the five years since his capture, Kasi sent Garrett a letter about once a month and the agent said he wrote back every four to six months. Garrett revealed that Kasi seemed to know he was a condemned man as soon as members of the FBI's hostage rescue team captured him during a 4 a.m. raid on a small hotel in a Pakistani town bordering Afghanistan on June 15, 1997. "We get into this huge tussle with him. He's screaming at the top of his lungs and we end up gagging him at some point," Garrett recalled. "We got him out of the hotel and put him in a vehicle," he said. "He leaned over to me and said, 'You're going to take me back to America and execute me, aren't you?' And I said that's a possibility." Kasi's attitude surprised the federal agent. "I guess after the initial tussle in the (hotel) room we seemed to get along fine. He is a mild mannered guy, except in this one area, obviously he has some issues of concern," Garrett said. Kasi talked freely and confessed to the FBI agents. Garrett said Kasi explained why he carried out the attack at the CIA. "He said he believed that it was wrong that the United States -- particularly the CIA -- was going into Muslim countries and, in his words, manipulating the governance there to the U.S. best interest. And he says it's wrong and he wanted to make a statement," Garrett said. However, Garrett said, Kasi apologized to the victims' families. "He's shown remorse for the victims, the surviving victims, and the pain and suffering. He actually has told them in writing and on the telephone that he's very sorry for what happened to their loved ones," Garrett said. "But he's not sorry about what he did. I mean, he believes in and I think he's comfortable with that." FBI agents chased Kasi around the world before capturing the man who had a $2 million price tag on his head. Kasi used an AK-47 to kill and wound workers around 8 a.m. on January 25, 1993 as they sat, waiting in their cars at a red light to turn into the CIA entrance. His fingerprints were on bullet casings found at the scene of the bloodbath. After locating the gun shop in northern Virginia that sold the AK-47, federal agents found the murder weapon in a Reston, Virginia, apartment Kasi shared. They soon learned that the Pakistani national had entered the United States on a business visa in 1991 and sought asylum the following year. He had worked for a local courier service and was familiar with the area. Kasi fled to his homeland one day after the shooting. U.S. officials believed his base of operations was Afghanistan and sources said the huge reward for Kasi's apprehension and prosecution led to a tip on his whereabouts. Kasi was convicted and placed on death row in 1998. -- CNN National Correspondent Bob Franken contributed to this report.
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