Deluge of Hate Crimes After 9/11 Pours Through System

DALLAS -- Mark Anthony Stroman was an easy case. A white supremacist, in the days after Sept. 11 he walked into a succession of convenience stores in the Dallas area and killed a clerk from Pakistan and another from India, and he partially blinded a third from Bangladesh.

Tried, convicted and sentenced to death, Stroman voices no remorse. He recalls telling each of his victims, "God bless America."

As the incidence of hate crimes against suspected Middle Easterners subsides, authorities are beginning to prosecute cases growing out of more than 420 investigations nationwide. Although some offenders show no regret, many others are expressing embarrassment over their hostile acts in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Joe Montez drew two years' probation for telephoning a truck stop in Hewitt, Texas, on Sept. 17. After asking whether the clerks were Iranians, he said, "There's a bomb where you're standing.... There's a bomb in your building."

Montez knows he should have controlled his Sept. 11 anger. "I made a mistake," he said in an interview. "I'm trying to put all that behind me."

The threats and retaliations have come in many forms: a call left on the voicemail of the president of the Arab American Institute in Washington. An anthrax hoax letter that turned up at an Arab American restaurant in Madison, Wis. Physical attacks, arson, hate messages on the Internet.