Texas inmate executed for killing Indian in the US

From Seema Hakhu Kachru
Houston, Jul 21 (PTI) A 41-year-old man in the US has
been executed for killing a convenience store clerk from India
during a shooting spree in 2001 that he had said was
retaliation for the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Mark Stroman, a Texas death row inmate, shot at least
three men he mistook for Arabs in the weeks after the attacks,
killing two of them.
He was convicted of killing Vasudev Patel, 49, during
the attempted robbery of a convenience store near Dallas in
October 2001. He was also charged in the fatal shooting of
Waqar Hasan, 46, a Muslim born in Pakistan.
He was executed after the US Supreme Court Wednesday
rejected a last-minute appeal by one of his victims to save
his life.
The lone survivor, Rais Bhuiyan, a native of
Bangladesh, had sued to stop the execution, saying his
religious beliefs as a Muslim told him to forgive.
Earlier Stroman had said his 2001 Dallas-area shooting
rampage was in retaliation for the September 11 terrorist
attacks. He had described the attacks as a patriotic response
to terrorism.
Stroman blamed the shootings on the loss of a sister
in the collapse of one of the World Trade Center towers,
although prosecutors said in court documents there's no firm
evidence she ever existed.
"I wanted those Arabs to feel the same sense of
vulnerability and uncertainty on American soil much like the
mindset of chaos and bedlam that they were already accustomed
to in their home country," he said on a website devoted to his
case.
Patel, whose death put stroman on a death row, had
moved from India to Texas in 1983, and was a naturalised US
citizen.
Stroman described his victims as "perched behind the
counter here in the Land of Milk and Honey..this foreigner
who's own people had now sought to bring the exact same chaos
and bewilderment upon our people and society as they lived in
themselves at home and abroad."
But he added he had made a "terrible mistake out of
love, grief and anger" and had destroyed his victims' families
"out of pure anger and stupidity.
He also said he wanted to spend time with the convict
to learn more about why the shootings occurred.
"I'm not the monster the media portrays me," he has
said.
Stroman was free on bond for a gun possession arrest
during the time of incident.
He had previous convictions for burglary, robbery,
theft and credit card abuse, served at least two prison terms
and was paroled twice.
Stroman's lethal injection would be the eighth this
year in Texas.
At least eight other inmates in the nation's busiest
death penalty state have execution dates in the coming weeks.
PTI SHK