Oklahoma bomber convicted

The jury deliberated 23 hours over four days before finding the accused guilty on counts of murder, conspiracy and using a weapon of mass destruction in the April 19, 1995 blast that took the biggest toll of human life in a terrorist act on American soil.

The case now moves to the punishment phase on Wednesday when the jury will be called to decide whether McVeigh should be sentenced to death by lethal injection or to life in prison without possibility of parole.

The prolonged deliberation by the jury has raised tensions among many people-particularly the hundreds of survivors and relatives and friends of the victims who thronged the court-and led to speculation as to whether McVeigh would be acquitted, as it happened to O J Simpson in the other famous murder trail.

But as the guilty verdict was pronounced, survivors and victims hugged and cried. Many of them said the pain of their loss would never go away, bu the guilty verdict would help them deal with the tragedy better and restore their faith in the system.

The trail and judge Matsch’s conduct of it, won high praise from everyone after the circus the O J Simpson trail turned out to be. The judge was in full control throughout and there were no publicity-hungry jurors, squabbling lawyers, book contracts or television cameras inside the court room, in this case.

Taken with the verdict, there was yesterday “a sense of justice, a renewal of faith in the system so reviled by the now convicted mass murderer,” one newspaper editorial said.

The Oklahoma City bombing also revealed a hitherto hidden dark undercurrent in an American society where angry, alienated drifters rage and plot against the government.

Timorthy McVeigh was on such tormented soul. A lonely and troubled boy who grew up in a broken home and disaffected society in Western New York state, he joined the army to escape a suffocating life. Here his disenchantment took a political hue. He opted out and drifted into the militia underworld an unexplored facet of American life and culture till the 1990s.

On April 19, 1995, wearing a T-shirt that read “Sic Semper Tyrannis” (Thus always to Tyrants), he set out to avenge the Waco incident and attack the political system which perpetuated it. He chose the Alfed Murrow Building-which housed several federal government offices-in downtown Oklahoma City. When his parked Ryder truck packed with explosive blew up shortly after 9 am. 168 people were killed. Among them were employees of Secret Service, Drug Enforcement, Administration, Customs, Departments of Transportation. Agriculture and Housing and Urban Development. There were 19 children-mostly from a day care center for federal employees-among the dead.