A man who embarked on a shooting spree in what he claimed was retaliation for 9/11 has been executed at a prison in Texas. The lone survivor of Mark Stroman's attack on convenience store workers in late 2001, Rais Bhuiyan, originally from Bangladesh, unsuccessfully sued to stop the execution, saying his religious beliefs as a Muslim required him to forgive the man. Stroman claimed the shooting spree that killed two men and injured a third targeted people from the Middle East, though all three victims were from south Asia. It was the death of 49-year-old Vasudev Patel, from India, that put Stroman on death row. Stroman's execution was the eighth this year in Texas.

From inside the death chamber, Stroman looked at five friends watching through a window and told them he loved them. The execution was delayed for almost three hours before the Texas court of criminal appeals barred a state judge in Austin from considering Bhuiyan's lawsuit to stop the execution. Bhuiyan had asked the courts to halt Stroman's execution and said he wanted to spend time with the inmate to learn more about why the shootings occurred. He lost sight in one of his eyes when Stroman shot him in the face. Stroman was free on bond for a gun possession arrest at the time of the attack.

Stroman confessed, and court documents show he told authorities he belonged to the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist prison gang. Stroman more recently denied the white supremacist description. Stroman blamed the shootings on the loss of a sister in the collapse of one of the World Trade Centre towers although prosecutors said in court documents that there was no firm evidence she ever existed. Stroman was also charged but not tried in the shooting death of Waqar Hasan. The attack on Bhuiyan came a week later.

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