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Executioner awaits Oklahoma bomber
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PRAYERS and protests yesterday marked the eve of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh's execution, as the mastermind of the worst act of domestic terrorism in US history counted the hours to his death.
Said by his lawyers to be both prepared to die and facing it without apparent fear, he reportedly said goodbye to family members in telephone conversations.
While he remained publicly unapologetic for the deaths of 168 men, women and children in the cataclysmic 1995 federal building bombing, he expressed his qualified regret in a newly released letter addressed to two reporters.
“I am sorry these people had to lose their lives,” McVeigh said. “But that's the nature of the beast. It's understood going in what the human toll will be.”
His execution by a lethal injection of three chemicals is scheduled for 12am GMT (8pm Beijing Time) on Monday.
McVeigh's death was to be witnessed at a prison in Indiana by 10 victims, 10 media representatives and four people McVeigh had invited.
In addition, about 300 victims of the blast or family members of those killed were to watch the procedure by closed circuit television in Oklahoma City.
During the 1997 trial in which McVeigh was convicted of killing eight federal officers who died in the blast, he did not admit to the bombing; but in a number of interviews since then he has, saying he acted alone out of anti-government rage prompted by the federal raid on the Branch Davidian cult compound in Waco, Texas, in which nearly 90 people are believed to have met a fiery death.
He is to die by an injection of three chemicals — sodium pentothal, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride — that stops the heart and lungs and results in death within 10 to 15 minutes.
(More on P6)
(SD-Agencies)
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