Bomb attack on the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City
The bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City , the capital of the US state of Oklahoma , on April 19, 1995 ( english Oklahoma City Bombing ) was one of the worst terrorist attacks in the history of the United States . 168 people were killed in the detonation of a truck loaded with explosives . The eight-story Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building served as the seat of several federal government agencies until it was almost completely destroyedserved. There was also a kindergarten on the first floor; a total of 19 children died. As perpetrators were Timothy McVeigh , a then 26-year-old veteran of the Second Gulf War , Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier identified and convicted. A memorial, the Oklahoma City National Memorial , was erected on the site of the building.
attack
The bomb was a 2.4-tonne, self-made explosive device ( ANNM , which is also commercially manufactured in the same town by the SEC company ) , made from ammonium nitrate ( mineral fertilizer ) and several hundred liters of nitromethane ( dragster fuel additive), which was loaded into a rented truck had been. It detonated in front of the building at 9:02 a.m. local time . The force of the explosion damaged over 300 buildings in downtown Oklahoma City and injured over 800 people. The explosion could still be felt 1.5 kilometers away.
A vehicle axle that could not be assigned to any of the damaged vehicles was found at the site of the attack. The associated vehicle could be determined from the vehicle number entered; It was a yellow Ford F-700 truck, built in 1993, which had been rented from Ryder Car Rental under the name Robert Kling . A large FBI contingent was able to track down a motel owner who remembered someone staying with him in one of these trucks under the name Timothy McVeigh . The manhunt for McVeigh immediately revealed that he was arrested about an hour after the attack at a traffic control because of a missing license plate and gun possession and was still in custody.
Perpetrator
Timothy McVeigh, a then 26-year-old Gulf War veteran, carried out the attack with his two accomplices, Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier.
The motive for the act is not fully understood. The choice of a government building as a target and the surroundings of the attackers suggest that the background was anti-government. Apparently the date was also chosen symbolically; it was the second anniversary of the evacuation of the Davidian sect's estate in Waco, Texas . The imitation of an attack on the institutions of the United States described in the Turner diaries , a right-wing , racist inflammatory pamphlet, is also suspected .
At times, conspiracy theories were circulating in the United States that the Ku Klux Clan , Islamist terrorists, the Northern Irish IRA and the Oklahoma-based German Andreas Strassmeir, son of the former Parliamentary State Secretary Günter Straßmeir (CDU), were involved in the attack . Although there was no evidence of any other person's involvement, this thesis was supported by McVeigh's attorney in order to stage their client only as a henchman and thereby make his guilt appear less.
Nichols received a life sentence plus six years for conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction and negligent homicide on eight counts. Fortier, who testified as a witness, was imprisoned for twelve years.
Timothy McVeigh was sentenced to death by federal court and executed with lethal injection on June 11, 2001 . He left a handwritten letter in which he quotes the poem Invictus by the English poet William Ernest Henley .
Commemoration
The ruins of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building were completely blown up in May 1995. In its place is now the Oklahoma City National Memorial , a memorial to the architects Hans and Torrey Butzer and Sven Berg. It consists of two stylized gates with the times “9:01” and “9:03” (the explosion happened at 9:02) and flanking a rectangular lake. There are 168 chairs to the side, one for each person who died in the attack.
In 2004 a new administration building was erected, in which special architectural (steel plates as pressure retardant, shatterproof glass) and tactical measures (no direct access routes) are intended to prevent a comparable attack.
reception
The fictional feature film Arlington Road is about alleged individual perpetrators and unsolved conspiracy theories in attacks on government buildings . His material is based in part on the attack in Oklahoma, but without making any reference to the actual event.
The combination of numbers 168: 1 cynically expresses the “balance sheet” of the bomb attack, in which the 168 fatalities face the execution of the main culprit McVeigh. The number combination first appeared on right-wing extremist T-shirts in the USA and later established itself internationally in neo-Nazi circles.
Web links
- The Memorial Museum website (English)
- The Oklahoma bomb. Video. In: Spiegel TV , April 23, 1995 (11 minutes)
Individual evidence
- ^ Bert Gamerschlag: Stranger from Germany . In: Der Spiegel . No. 23 , 1997 ( online ).
- ↑ Bert Gamerschlag, Clemens Höges: I am a rebel . In: Der Spiegel . No. 23 , 1997 ( online ).
- ↑ Tom Kenworthy: Nichols Gets Life Sentence. In: The Washington Post , June 5, 1998.
Coordinates: 35 ° 28 ′ 23 ″ N , 97 ° 31 ′ 1 ″ W.