US delays execution of Oklahoma City bomber

BY MARY DEJEVSKY AND ANDREW GUMBEL

WASHINGTON - The execution of the Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh has been postponed for one month because of procedural irregularities, US attorney general John Ashcroft said this morning.

Mr Ashcroft announced the delay following the discovery of more than 3,000 pages of documents at FBI headquarters that had never been provided to the defence lawyers.

The development is not only a grave embarrassment to the US government but may also shed light on the body of evidence pointing to a wider conspiracy by right-wing supremacists.

At a hastily scheduled news conference, President Bush said that the decision was going "to create frustration among people whose lives were destroyed by McVeigh" but that there was an obligation to make sure that "the case was handled in full accordance with all the guarantees of our courts."

As the Independent article published by nzherald.co.nz today reports, the official lone-bomber theory only arose after the FBI tried and failed to track down the man known as "John Doe No.2," another possible suspect identified in a composite drawing.

It is refuted by a raft of eyewitness testimony and inconsistencies in McVeigh's own account of his activities.

The announcement, from the country's top law officer, came less than six days before McVeigh, 33, was due to die by lethal injection for the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.

A total of 168 people died in the explosion, including 19 children at a nursery in the building. The new date for the execution is June 11.

The documents apparently came to light earlier this week as staff at the FBI started compiling an archive on the case. Their presence was disclosed by the FBI in a letter to the Justice Department that became public yesterday.

In his statement, Mr Ashcroft acknowledged that there would be widespread opposition to the postponement and that there was "no doubt in my mind about the guilt of Timothy McVeigh."

But he said that it was his duty to promote the rule of law and justice. He said he had ordered an investigation into why the documents were not disclosed.

The FBI said the documents contained nothing that would have affected the verdict: McVeigh confessed to planting the bomb at the Murrah building in Oklahoma City on the first anniversary of the FBI's armed assault on the Branch Davidian compound at Waco in Texas, and waived all his rights to appeal.

A second man, Terry Nichols, has been convicted in federal court of helping McVeigh and is currently serving a life sentence.

The FBI's admission confirmed long-standing complaints of stalling from lawyers representing both McVeigh and Nichols. They accused the authorities of withholding the documents, either to simplify the prosecution's case or to dispel suspicions about a right-wing conspiracy.

McVeigh's lead lawyer, Nathan Chambers, said from his office in Denver that his client was "weighing all his options."

According to lawyers, these could include requesting a new trial. Lawyers for Nichols said that they would be lodging an appeal.

- INDEPENDENT