Pakistan is bracing itself for a backlash against the execution of one of its citizens in the United States for killing two CIA agents in 1993.
The brother of Mir Aimal Kasi hailed him as a martyr today as thousands of troops patrolled his native city amid fears of reprisals after he was executed in Virginia.
"He is a martyr. His smiling face is still in front of me," Mr Naseebullah Kasi, said. "It [the execution] was coming and I had little hope that the Supreme Court would stay his execution, but still the news was shocking," he said.
The US Supreme Court rejected a last-minute appeal for a stay of execution and the governor of Virginia state, where the execution took place, refused Kasi's request for clemency.
Kasi, who comes from a powerful tribe in Pakistan's south-west desert province of Baluchistan, was killed by lethal injection in a Virginia jail and was pronounced dead at 2.07 a.m. Irish time, just after 7 a.m. local time.
Hundreds of Kasi tribesmen and local community leaders poured into the family home in the Baluchistan capital Quetta to console his relatives. Some 2,000 extra police and paramilitary troops were patrolling Quetta.
Hundreds of police and paramilitary troops were also patrolling the volatile southern port city of Karachi, where two suicide car bomb blasts outside the US consulate and the Sheraton hotel killed 26 people earlier this year, including 11 French nationals.
AFP