Rais Bhuiyan

Please contact Governor Rick Perry to urge him to grant a stay of execution to Mark Stroman, who is scheduled for execution Wednesday, July 20. Rais Bhuiyan , who survived being shot by Mark Stroman is urging that Stroman not be executed.

Call Governor Perry at 512 463 2000. You can also use Perry’s website contact form, or better yet, both call and email.

They will answer the phone during office hours. If you call after office hours, you can leave a message.

Come to the Texas Capitol at 11th and Congress on Wednesday, July 20 at 5:30 PM to protest the scheduled execution of Mark Stroman.

Urge Governor Perry to grant a stay of execution for Mark Stroman.

Just 10 days after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Rais Bhuiyan was working at a gas station in Dallas when he was shot in the face by a man named Mark Stroman.

Stroman was on a shooting spree, targeting people who appeared to be Muslim or of Middle Eastern descent. Stroman is due to be executed July 20; Bhuiyan, the only survivor of the attacks, is fighting to save his life.

When Stroman entered the gas station, Bhuiyan initially thought it was a routine robbery.

“I opened the cash register, offered him the cash, and requested him not to shoot me,” Bhuiyan tells weekends on All Things Considered host Laura Sullivan. “In reply he asked me, ‘Where are you from?’ And the question seemed strange to ask during a robbery. And I said, ‘Excuse me?’ And as soon as I spoke, I felt the sensation of a million bees stinging my face, and then heard an explosion.”

Bhuiyan required medical attention for years after the attack. The bullet hit him on the right side of the face, leaving severe injuries, particularly to his right eye.

“I had to go through several surgeries and finally the doctor could save the eye, but the vision is gone, and I’m still carrying more than 35 pellets on the right side of my face,” he says. “Once I touch my face, my skull, I can feel it’s all bumpy. It took several years to go through all these painful surgeries one after another one.”

From CBS News:

Less than a week before convicted killer Mark Anthony Stroman is scheduled for execution, one of his victims is suing Texas Governor Rick Perry in effort to save the life of the man who tried to take his during a spree of hate crimes following the September 11, 2001 attacks.

“Please do the right thing, save a human life, please,” Rais Bhuiyan said from the steps of the Travis County Courthouse Thursday, according to CBS affiliate KTVT.

Bhuiyan, a devout Muslim, begged for mercy for Stroman, a death row inmate who shot him in 2001, leaving him partially blind.

“Please, listen to my request and lower Mark’s punishment from death to life in prison,” he said, “If the Governor of Texas and the Board of Pardons and Parole can listen to the victims when they want revenge, why can they not listen when the victims are asking for mercy?”

Stroman was convicted of killing an Islamic man in the months following the September 11, 2001 attacks, but according to police, he also killed a second man and shot Bhuiyan, who was working at a convenience store in southeastern Dallas. According to KTVT, all the victims were from India and Pakistan.

Stroman believed the U.S. government “hadn’t done their job so he was going to do it for them” and retaliate for the terrorist attacks, according to The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“September 11th did a horrible thing not just to the U.S. but to the world, this is a time we can take a new narrative, a narrative of forgiveness, compassion, tolerance and healing,” Bhuiyan said. “I never hated him, I was never angry at him, rather I understand what he did was out of ignorance.”

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