Two Asian men are murdered in suspected race-hate shootings

Revenge Attacks

Two Asian men were murdered in the United States in what appeared to be the first misguided revenge killings for last week's terror attacks.

Both were petrol station owners in relatively affluent big-city suburbs.

One was a Pakistani Muslim, the other was an Indian Sikh, who may have been attacked because his beard and turban reminded his attackers of Osama bin Laden, the man widely thought to be behind last week's attacks and named by the American authorities as a main suspect.

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.

In Mesa, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix, police reported that 52-year-old Balbir Singh Sodhi was shot dead by a white male who drove a pick-up truck into Mr Sodhi's Chevron station and opened fire with a handgun on Saturday afternoon.

That killing was apparently the opening salvo in a shooting spree that led the unnamed assailant to attack two other petrol stations, at least one of which was run by men of Arab origin. Police later spotted a Chevrolet pick-up matching the description of the assailant's vehicle, traced the registration and made an arrest after raiding a home.

Again, the police would not publicly speculate on a motive, but an acquaintance of Mr Sodhi's, a fellow Sikh called Hari Simran Singh Khalsa, told reporters he was convinced it was a hate crime.

"We're mostly distraught. We happen to practise a religion that makes us look like the bad guy," Mr Khalsa said. "As Americans, we're shocked."

Mr Sodhi, who had a wife and three adult children, had been planning to return to his native India to live with one of his sons. His killing was the culmination of several days of intimidation directed at Sikhs in the area. "We've had people that work in convenience stores and gas stations and have been unable to work this week because of overt harassment," Mr Khalsa said. Because of the beards and turbans, he added, "we look more like bin Laden than the Muslims do".

Petrol station owners have been most vulnerable to hate attacks in recent days across the United States, in part because they are relatively visible and often alone, especially at night.

Taxi drivers have also been insulted, threatened and attacked. In many cities, police are protecting at-risk sites such as mosques and community centres. Most, if not all, politicians have appealed for calm.