Sodhi’s relatives hailed the murder’s conviction

WASHINMGTON, October 1 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – An American was convicted Tuesday, September 30, of murdering a Sikh man, whom he mistook for an Arab in revenge for the September 11 attacks.

Frank Silva Roque's lawyers had tried to claim he was insane when he shot Indian immigrant Balbir Singh Sodhi in an Arizona station just four days after the terror attacks, said the BBC News Online.

Convicted by the judge of attempted murder, drive-by shooting and endangerment, 44-year-old Roque could now face the death penalty in the town of Mesa.

Roque's defense lawyers claimed he had never used racial slurs prior to the attacks in Washington and New York, but prosecutors said Roque had mistaken the turbaned Sodhi for a Muslim and subsequently shot him out of hatred and a desire for revenge, not insanity.

Prosecutor Vince Imbordino drew particular attention to the pre-meditated nature of the crime, saying Roque had practiced shooting and reloading before killing Sodhi.

After the killing, that came as part of a massive surge of hate crimes against Muslims and Arabs in the United States, Roque then fired shots at another petrol station, where a man of Lebanese descent was working, and then at a house inhabited by an Afghan family.

Roque was quickly found and taken into custody.

"I'm a damn American all the way, I'm an American. Arrest me and let those terrorists run wild," he was quoted as saying when arrested.

‘Not Tolerated’

The conviction was met with satisfaction of the victims family, calling it a clear message that hate crimes would not be tolerated in the United States.

"They showed that America protects all the innocent people... We respect all the religions, all the different people," the victim brother, Lakhwinder Singh Sodhi, told reporters.

"America wants justice. We showed the world we can't have hate crimes in our community," he said.

Sodhi, 49, who came to the United States in 1988 from a small village in Punjab, was one of several Sikhs attacked in the United States in the wake of the 9-11 attacks after apparently being mistaken for possible supporters of Al-Qaeda, blamed by Washington for the attacks.

Hate crimes against Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. increased to record levels, by 1,700% in 2001 according to crime statistics compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In 2000, the FBI received reports of 28 hate crimes against Muslims and Arabs in the U.S. In 2001, that number increased to 481.

But eyes still raise over the rule against the American murder, as leaders of the Muslim community had vocalized their frustration in September in objection to the light sentence against a man who threw a bomb at a Chicago Muslim family last March.