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Dead and gone

B. S. Raghavan

SIX years ago, in April 1995, bombs planted by Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma building complex housing federal government offices exploded, killing 168 innocent persons, including 19 little children in a day-care centre. The blasts were so powerful that when I visited the scene of the crime five months later, I could see that all the glass windows of nearby buildings had been smashed to smithereens.

Precisely at 7-14 a.m. on Monday, June 11, strapped to the bed and wrapped like a mummy in white cloth up to his neck, with only his face visible, McVeigh gave three deep sighs and died in Indiana prison following injection of lethal doses of three drugs , one after another. He lifted his head to make eye contact with, and nod cheerfully at, those who had been brought to witness the execution through a glass window: His lawyers, the select team of reporters of the media and the group of citizens represen ting the bereaved families whose lives had been blighted for ever by the horrible tragedy. After surveying the death chamber with curiosity, McVeigh put his head down, stared straight at the ceiling and died with eyes open.

Thus, was enacted before a nation, putting aside everything to watch the TV with bated breath for accounts of McVeigh's departure from this planet, the final scene of a national trauma which began with the worst and the biggest instance of mass terrorism in the history of the US. Somehow, in his perverted mind he saw himself as the chosen instrument to avenge the casualties resulting from what he construed as a grave crime of the FBI: Its storming of the premises in Waco, Texas, of members of an obscure religious sect who had hurled bombs and committed other acts of violence killing four agents of the Bureau.

McVeigh, who was a decorated Marine, using military phraseology, heartlessly called the deaths in Oklahoma ``collateral damage'' in an ``act of war'' against the US Government. Right until his last moment, he showed neither repentance nor remorse for his heinous crime, but prepared himself for his exit with all the nonchalance of one who was leaving on a vacation. His execution was originally set for May 16, but just a week before that date, it was found that the FBI had failed to hand over to McVeigh's defence counsel during the trial more than 4,000 documents to which they were entitled under the US legal procedure called ``discovery''.

Although, as it turned out, these documents contained no material that went counter to the judicial verdict on McVeigh's guilt, because of this most incredible instance of inefficiency, the Attorney General was forced to order postponement of the executi on to June 11 to give time to the defence lawyers to examine the documents and approach the courts for any relief they thought was their client's due. Their pleas for a further stay and possible retrial were rejected by the trial court and a two-member a ppellate bench. McVeigh brushed aside their advice to go in appeal before a full bench and to the Supreme Court, and chose to meet his Maker without further ado.

As is to be expected, the outskirts of the prison were swarming with media contingents and hundreds of onlookers who had arrived from far and near either out of curiosity or out of a sense of solidarity with the victims' families. It was touching that ev en while immersed in grief over the loss of loved ones, some parents and spouses showed nobility of spirit to forgive the perpetrator of the mass murder, and even went so far as to express themselves against capital punishment, wishing that McVeigh's lif e had been spared and given life imprisonment instead.