Balbir Singh Sodhi was gunned down on Sept. 15, 2001 in Mesa, Arizona. The turban-wearing Sikh was killed outside his gas station. Sodhi's killer spent the hours before the murder in a bar, bragging of his intention to "kill the ragheads responsible for September 11." He has been convicted and sits on death row.
Waqar Hasan of Dallas, Texas was also murdered on Sept. 15, 2001. The 46-year-old Pakistani, was shot to death in a convenience store he owned. Hasan was murdered by Mark Stroman, who was convicted of also murdering Vasudev Patel days later in nearby Mesquite, Texas.
Cordell noted that Stroman admitted to authorities to blinding a third victim, a Bangladeshi, in between the murders of Hasan and Patel. After his arrest Stroman bragged, "I did what every American wanted to do after Sept. 11th but didn't have the nerve."
Cordell says the Sodhi, Hasan and Patel cases are indisputable examples of having links to Sept. 11 related hate backlash. Yet, none of the three families have received any compensation from any of the September 11th funds.
"There are certainly others that likely fall into this category," Cordell said.
Other probable Sept. 11 linked hate backlash victims include:
Adel Karas, 48, a grocer from Egypt and a Coptic Christian, who was killed Sept. 15, 2001 in his San Gabriel, California store.
Another victim was Ali Almansoop, an American citizen and father of four. He was murdered six days later on Sept. 21, 2001 at his Detroit, Michigan home. Almansoop was a Yemen native. Prosecutors charged a Garden City man with first-degree murder in his shooting death. Allegedly, Almansoop was dating the ex-girlfriend of his killer, although the killer reportedly claimed he was glad he shot him because of Sept. 11.
Jawed Wassel of Queens, New York was an Afghani American (according to a friend of the family). Wassel had just finished producing a film about Iraq when he got into a dispute with one of his film's investors. The investor was later charged with decapitating Wassel and chopping up his body in the days after Sept. 11.
"It was as if Sept. 11 gave the investor permission to vent his rage against this guy. He had some conflict. Maybe he would have assaulted him. But would he have decapitated him and chopped his body into pieces, if not for the climate after 9/11?" Cordell asked.
The day before Abdo Ali Ahmed, 51, was murdered, he found a note on his car threatening to kill him and deriding his ethnicity. Ahmed, a Yemeni shopkeeper in Reedly, California, showed the note to friends and family but threw it away after concluding the threat was little more than typical post-Sept. 11 rage.
The next day, on Sept. 29, Ahmed was found murdered. Police have never charged a suspect in the case and they did not find the note he showed to his friends and family. Ahmed was a father of eight. The family lived in California for 35 years. The killing so frightened his surviving family members that they moved and till this day remain in hiding.
Abdullah Mohammed Nimer, 53, was a door-to-door salesman who lived and worked in Los Angeles, California. The motive in his Oct. 13, 2001 murder did not appear to be robbery. When his body was found, his car was unlocked and filled with valuable merchandise worth thousands of dollars. Police found several hundred dollars in cash with the victim that was also untouched.
List of Post Sept. 11 Hate Crime Victims