On April 5, 2002, Mark Stroman, a 32-year-old stonecutter from Dallas, entered Texas’s death row for the murder of Vasudev Patel, an Indian immigrant and gas station owner in Mesquite, TX. Patel was Stroman’s third and final victim. In the three weeks after the September 11th terrorist attacks, Stroman also shot and killed Waqar Hasan, a Pakistani immigrant in Dallas, and partially blinded a gas station attendant from Bangladesh in the erroneous belief all three men were Arabs. The press labeled the murders Texas's first post 9/11 hate crime. Stroman himself claimed that “blinded by rage,” he killed to avenge the United States. The prosecution convinced the jury that robbery was his true motive, (even though he hadn’t taken money from his victims) and he was sentenced to death. [more...]
Spiegel Online: "Ich habe ihn nie gehasst"
