Urgent Updates! Third
Racially Motivated Murder Since S11!
Indian man shot dead in US in apparent backlash to terror
attacks
Sunday September 16, 2001
WASHINGTON, Sept 16 (AFP) - An Indian man who moved to the United States 10
years ago was shot dead on the weekend by an unidentified assailant, The Arizona
Republic newspaper reported Sunday, in what looked like a misplaced
incident of revenge for the attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
Balbir Singh Sodhi, 49, was killed Saturday when a gunman driving a black pick-up truck drove into the Mesa, Arizona service station he ran and fired three shots. The assailant then drove on to another service station where a Lebanese-American employee was working and to a house, firing shots but injuring no one else.
Sodhi's brother, Harjit, told the newspaper his sibling was
killed because his dark skin, beard and turban made him look Middle Eastern,
like the men US authorities say hijacked the planes used in Tuesday's devastating
attacks. "Some people don't understand because we are different, because
we look like (Osama) bin Laden," Harjit said. "But we are not Muslim."
The
Sodhis, originally from Punjab in India, belong to the Sikh religion.
The newspaper said police were trying to trace the killer. One officer, sergeant Mike Goulet, said the murder was not being considered a racist crime.
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A 2nd "Backlash" MURDER!
by Stop Racist Hate Crimes 1:26am Mon Sep 17 '01
A second "backlash" murder... this one involving a Pakistani immigrant
in Texas.
Published in the U.K. Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/
September 17 2001 Asian man murdered in suspected race-hate shooting Revenge Attacks
In Pleasant Grove, a middle-class suburb of Dallas, Waqar Hassan Choudhry, 40, was shot dead at a convenience store shortly after 10pm on Saturday night. There was no evidence of a robbery, and local detectives told Mr Choudhry's family they believed his killing was motivated by blind revenge.
Officially, the police were saying little. "We don't know who did it or why, it's too early in the investigation," Sergeant Gary Kilpatrick of the Dallas police homicide department said. "At this point, we can't prove or disprove anything. We're looking for witnesses and checking the evidence."
But the victim's cousin, Mazhar Rehman, said yesterday he was almost certainly killed because of his race or religion. "We feel this is more likely to be backlash than robbery," Mr Rehman, a businessman from Glasgow, said. "My cousin was saying that there have been other incidents in Dallas, with people being abused or beaten up."
Mr Choudhry, married with four girls, was from Karachi and had
been in America for 10 years. He had recently moved to Dallas from Edison,
New Jersey, home to one of the east coast's largest Pakistani communities,
to run the petrol station with another immigrant.
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Egyptian Grocer MURDERED in L.A.!
by Stop Racist Attacks 9:42am Tue Sep 18 '01
A 3rd. "backlash" murder has taken place. An Egyptian Grocer in San Gabriel is the latest victim to fall to hate.
KCBS (Channel 2)
Tuesday September 18 2001
Grocer's Murder Investigated As Hate Crime
The fatal shooting Saturday of a neighborhood grocer of Egyptian descent in San Gabriel will be investigated by the FBI as a possible hate crime, an agent said Monday.
"We are going to be opening that case as a hate crime," Matt McLaughlin, of the FBI's Los Angeles office, told news wires. "If they haven't already started the investigation, it will be soon."
Adel Karas, 48, of Arcadia, was fatally shot about 3:15 p.m. Saturday at International Market, 1381 E. Las Tunas Drive. Although Karas' family told reporters they feared he was killed because his attackers thought he might be Muslim -- he was a Coptic Christian from Egypt.
McLaughlin said he was not familiar with the evidence that prompted the FBI to get involved, but speculated that the bureau wanted to "err on the side of caution." FBI Director Robert Mueller told reporters in Washington that since World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, there have been dozens of retaliatory hate crimes directed at members of the Arab-American community nationwide.
Sheriff's deputies are seeking three suspects, two of whom entered
the store, confronted the owner and shot him in the upper body, Bottomley
said. The suspects fled in a copper-colored Honda driven by a third suspect.