Jurors deciding on life or death for a Pakistani who killed two CIA workers spent the night isolated from their families and under armed guard after four Americans were killed in an ambush in Pakistan.
The judge in Mir Aimal Kasi's capital murder trial decided Wednesday that the jury should be sequestered as a shield from publicity about the overseas attack, which police in Pakistan said was believed to be in retaliation for Kasi's conviction. No threats were made against the jury, said Jim Vickery, chief deputy sheriff for Fairfax County.But a previously unknown group in Pakistan claimed responsibility for the ambush and threatened further violence if Kasi gets the death penalty.
Jurors, who returned Thursday for possibly more witness testimony, on Monday sent the judge a note expressing fear for their safety, defense attorney Richard Goemann said. The exact contents of the note were not disclosed.
Sequestered juries are not usually protected by armed guards. The jurors are allowed outside contact only under the supervision of a deputy sheriff and deputies monitor all calls the jurors place or receive, Vickery said.
Earlier Wednesday, four American oil company employees and their Pakistani driver were shot to death in Karachi, the Pakistan capital.
Jurors sent the note on the day Kasi, 33, was found guilty of killing CIA communications analyst Frank Darling, 28, and Lansing Bennett, 66, a CIA physician, and wounding three other people as they waited at a traffic light outside the suburban Langley CIA headquarters on Jan. 25, 1993.
Goemann asked Judge J. Howe Brown for permission to question jurors individually about whether they had read accounts of the killings in Pakistan, but the judge refused. However, as he has each morning, Brown asked if any jurors had seen or heard anything about the case. No one responded.
In Pakistan, police stepped up security after Wednesday's killings in Karachi, setting up roadblocks in the southern port of 14 million residents to question morning rush-hour drivers and search cars for weapons.
The U.S. Embassy in the Pakistan capital of Islamabad urged Americans in Karachi to stay indoors. One American company, Black & Veatch engineering of Kansas City, said it had its seven workers in Karachi "locked down" in a hotel under armed guard.
"If Aimal Kasi is martyred then we will not spare any American Jews on Pakistani soil and we will destroy the American Embassy in Pakistan," declared the letter, signed Ajab Gul.
The letter also warned that "Clinton will die" if Kasi is not released. The White House has said Wednesday's attack will not deter planned visits by Clinton in early 1998 or by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Sunday.
Kasi was captured by the FBI in Pakistan in June, ending a 41/2-year international manhunt. Prosecutors said Kasi was on a mission to avenge the U.S. bombing of Iraq in the Persian Gulf War and American intervention in Muslim countries.
Two doctors testified for the defense Wednesday that Kasi had suffered damage to the frontal lobe of his brain and one, neurologist Richard Restak, said Kasi confessed to the CIA shootings.
Restak said people with damaged frontal lobes have trouble understanding the long-term consequences of their actions, may be apathetic and relate poorly to other people. Frontal lobe damage, however, might not harm a person's intelligence, he testified.