I asked the question in my previous post. A computational mechanism revealed that AlCl ₃ or its dimer Al ₂ Cl ₆ could catalyse a concerted 1,1-substitution reaction at the carbon of Cl-C≡N, with benzene displacing chloride which is in turn captured by the Al. Unfortunately the calculated barrier for this simple process was too high for a reaction apparently occuring at ~room temperatures.