Washington - The US Attorney General, Mr John Ashcroft, is expected today to announce that he will facilitate up to 250 victims of the Oklahoma bombing, and their relatives, to watch on closed-circuit TV the execution of the man responsible, Timothy McVeigh, writes Patrick Smyth.
He will be put to death by lethal injection on May 16th. McVeigh (32) was convicted of the murder in 1995 of 168 people, including 19 children, in the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
He recently cancelled all legal appeals, saying he wanted to go ahead with what he deemed his "state-assisted suicide" and is contributing to the increasingly macabre circus that his execution is becoming.
McVeigh has insisted that if all the relatives get their wish to see his final moments, he will demand that the execution be broadcast nationally on network TV.
Such a request is certain to be turned down, but one cable TV company has already gone into court seeking the right to put a camera in the specially built chamber. It wants to offer pay-per-view customers the chance to watch the execution at $1.95 each.
And in an interview with two reporters for a recently published biography, McVeigh, who confessed to the bombing, has explained what he will be doing in his last seconds while strapped to a gurney - he will recite lines from W.E. Henley's poem Invictus:
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
Some 1,400 journalists are expected to attend the prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, although only 10 media representatives will be able to witness the execution.
Although the prison service is putting up some press tents outside the jail, journalists who want chairs, desks, or a phone are being asked to come up with $1,465 each by a private company.
The company will also provide journalists with water and transportation on golf carts to the two designated protest sites where pro and anti-death penalty activists will be confined.
McVeigh will first be rendered unconscious with sodium pentathol. His lungs will be collapsed with pancuroinium bromide, before potassium chloride is administered to stop his heart.
The procedure is expected to take five to seven minutes.