“I requested a meeting with Mr. Stroman. I’m eagerly awaiting to see him in person and exchange ideas. I would talk about love and compassion. We all make mistakes. It’s very important that I meet him to tell him I feel for him and I strongly believe he should get a second chance. That I never hated the U.S. He could educate a lot of people. Thinking about what is going to happen makes me very emotional. I can’t sleep. Once I go to bed I feel there is another person that I know who is in his bed thinking about what is going to happen to him — that he is going to be tied to a bed and killed. It makes me very emotional.” —Pakistan-born Rais Bhuiyan, who survived a shooting that killed two others in the days following September 11, when 41-year-old Texas man Mark Anthony Stroman shot them because he believed they were Arabs. Stroman is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday, but Bhuiyan has been meeting with officials in Texas to try to persuade the state to spare the gunman’s life. [NYT]
