The saga of a heinous crime

AN `AMERICAN TERRORIST', as the maverick Timothy McVeigh came to be characterised in some circles within the United States, has been subjected to the ultimate death penalty. The capital punishment meted out to him in a mega media event is in line with the sombre provisions of the U.S. criminal jurisprudence. More importantly, the American authorities seem satisfied that the convicted perpetrator of the worst act of internal terrorism (as distinct from international horrors of a similar kind) has been suitably brought to book and executed under a due process. In the event, McVeigh died without expressing any remorseful afterthoughts over a crime he actually confessed to carrying out. Six years ago, he had taken the lives of 168 persons, including 19 children, by triggering a truck-bomb explosion at a federal building in Oklahoma City. With that, McVeigh not only erased his record as a soldier who took part in the U.S.' military operation of Desert Storm during the 1991 Gulf War but also raised the banner of a macabre revolt against the American Government. It took the U.S. federal authorities some time to piece together the saga of McVeigh's act of unparalleled domestic terror on American soil. The story that soon gained currency and credence was that his hate-agenda had been fuelled by his cynical perceptions of a raid by federal agents on the Branch Davidian premises in Waco, Texas. A picture that emerged on the whole, as the U.S. administration prosecuted McVeigh, was of a megalomaniac killer who sought to place himself above the state itself without the philosophical armour of a dissident-intellectual.

With McVeigh's legal execution being the first in U.S. federal history in nearly four decades, the President, Mr. George W. Bush, has of course sought to place it in a contemporary perspective. Aware of the general international outcry (especially in the West) against capital punishment as an anachronistic aspect of jurisprudence, Mr. Bush maintained that the lethal injection administered to McVeigh was a measure of justice and not vengeance on behalf of his victims and the society. The President's considered view is that the ``reckoning'' has been made only after the rights of the accused were fully protected until the completion of the due process. Mr. Bush's statement can be seen as an answer to the opponents of death penalty at home and abroad. McVeigh's sentence was effected only after the execution was delayed in order to give his lawyers time to process several relevant documents which the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had failed to produce in the first instance in what was clearly a lapse in prosecutional rectitude. It is this aspect of a postponed execution that supports the contention of fair play until the end.

The final stage of the case was dominated by a judicial ruling that the FBI's initial lapse was not proven to be an attempt at committing a fraud on the courts. McVeigh is also said to have voluntarily ended his judicial battle for life, while his attorney is quoted as apologising to the survivors of the Oklahoma City bombing (as also the relatives of those killed in it) for having failed to convince McVeigh of the wisdom of a parting reconciliation with them. It was in this poignant context that a montage of McVeigh's last moments was relayed `live' on a closed circuit television channel so that those directly traumatised by his deed could witness his execution. Now, questions whether McVeigh had acted alone as the bomber might still linger, while the U.S. authorities seem to calculate that the episode can serve as a testimony to their will to frustrate international terrorists as well. Yet, the U.S. is likely to come under international pressure to consider modernising its system of retributive justice by recognising death penalty as an affront to profound humanism and to civilisational decency.

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