McVeigh execution confirmed

Timothy McVeigh: On death row in Indiana

US Attorney-General John Ashcroft has confirmed that Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh will be executed on 11 June.

Mr Ashcroft said documents that were not given by the FBI to McVeigh's lawyers contained no evidence to further delay the execution.

Most of the documents could not have qualified as evidence

Attorney-General John Ashcroft

He was speaking at a news conference as he released a report into the withheld documents.

Mr Ashcroft ordered a one-month delay to McVeigh's execution after the FBI said it has discovered documents which had not been disclosed to the defence during his trial in 1997.

"The first delay of this case was necessary for this review by lawyers for the defence and the prosecution," said Mr Ashcroft.

"A second delay in this case would ignore the evidence and the facts in the case," he added.

'No doubt'

The attorney-general emphasised that the belatedly produced documents represented "less than one percent" of the hundreds of thousands of pages of other evidence.

The bomb was the worst peacetime attack on US soil

"No documents created any doubt about his guilt, let alone established his innocence," said Mr Ashcroft.

He went on to briefly outline the nature of some of the missing documents, which included newspaper clippings sent in by a person under psychiatric care, and offers from psychics to assist in the investigation.

The FBI came under fierce criticism after it publicly conceded it had mislaid evidence on 10 May, the day before McVeigh was due to be executed.

FBI Director Louis Freeh has blamed the mistake on poor communication between its Washington office and a field office in Oklahoma City responsible for archiving evidence.

Facing death

McVeigh is on death row at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, where he faces death by lethal injection.

McVeigh faces death by lethal injection.

He was sentenced to death after being convicted of the bombing of the Alfred P Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City in April 1995, in which 168 people died and hundreds were injured.

His lawyers are considering whether to seek another delay in his execution, apply for a retrial or to challenge his death sentence.