Monday June 11 4:11 PM ET

McVeigh Execution Unleashes European Condemnation

By Matt Spetalnick

MADRID (Reuters) - Europeans condemned the U.S. execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh on Monday as a cruel, barbaric act on the eve of President Bush's first official visit to the continent.

European opposition to the death penalty outweighed abhorrence at McVeigh's crime when he was put to death by lethal injection at an Indiana prison for a 1995 blast that gutted a federal office building and killed 168 people.

Critics of capital punishment called the execution a vengeful, morally unjustifiable way of making McVeigh pay for his crime.

``By executing the first federal death row prisoner in nearly four decades, the USA has allowed vengeance to triumph over justice and distanced itself yet further from the aspirations of the international community,'' the London-based human rights group Amnesty International said.

America's penchant for the death penalty puts it ethically at odds with its traditional European allies, which have all abolished it. The last person executed in the European Union was killed by guillotine in France in 1977.

Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, speaking on behalf of the EU, said the 15 member-states regretted the continued U.S. application of capital punishment and would express their concerns to Bush at a summit this week in Gothenburg, Sweden.

In Berlin, the German government said it opposed McVeigh's execution on ``fundamental principle.''

But other European critics used harsher words.

``Timothy McVeigh was a cold-blooded murderer. He will not be missed. But the way he died was sad, pathetic and wrong,'' said Lord Russell-Johnston, president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, a 43-member human rights watchdog based in Strasbourg in eastern France.

``It is high time the United States rethought its attitude to the death penalty and aligned its position with the great majority of the free and democratic world,'' he said.

Antonio Maria Pereira, president of the Portuguese human rights group Law and Justice, denounced the U.S. death penalty as ''barbarism inappropriate to our times.''

CASTS SHADOW OVER BUSH VISIT

Controversy surrounding McVeigh's execution could cast a shadow over Bush's five-nation tour, which was due to begin on Tuesday morning with the start of a one-day visit to Spain.

About 200 anti-death penalty activists gathered outside the U.S. embassy on Monday night in a silent, candle-lit vigil.

Bush has been depicted in the European media as a ``serial executioner'' because of his record as governor of Texas where 152 executions took place during his nearly six years in office.

The United States and Japan are the only rich, industrial nations that still put convicted criminals to death.

Many Europeans are puzzled that the United States, a country that holds itself up as a model of democracy and human rights, continues to carry out death sentences.

But the public spectacle surrounding McVeigh's execution appeared to have awakened an even stronger recognition of the transatlantic divide.

Even though most Europeans recoiled at the enormity of McVeigh's crime, it struck them as macabre that more than 300 survivors and relatives were allowed to watch his execution on closed-circuit television in Oklahoma City.

``It's quite cruel to revel in the death of another person,'' said Ignacio Diaz, a Spanish human rights activist and former national senator.

STRONG RESONANCE IN SPAIN

McVeigh's execution had particular resonance in Spain.

Joaquin Martinez, a 30-year-old Spaniard who was convicted and then cleared of double murder in the United States, returned home on Sunday after three years on Florida's death row.

His ordeal sparked outrage in Spain, still haunted by memories of thousands of summary executions carried out during the 1939-1975 dictatorship of Generalisimo Francisco Franco.

Unlike the Martinez case, few Europeans doubted McVeigh's guilt in the deadliest bombing ever carried out on U.S. soil.

But many slammed the U.S. government for continuing to use a form of punishment they say is biased against the poor and non-whites, leaves no room for judicial error and, in a case like McVeigh's, risks making a martyr of a mass murderer.

Pope John Paul had appealed in vain for Bush to spare McVeigh's life. Bush said on Tuesday justice had been served.

Nevertheless, some anti-capital punishment activists said McVeigh's execution could backfire on the Bush administration by opening up U.S. debate on the death penalty.

Still, not everyone in Europe was slamming Bush.

``What McVeigh did against the federal government and the American people is absolutely a crime worth putting him to death for,'' said Linda Gilmore, a tourist in Rome from Bush's home town of Midland, Texas.

U.S. officials, when confronted overseas about the death penalty, routinely respond that it is an internal matter for Americans, their lawmakers and their courts to decide.

-----