John Allen Muhammad, the mastermind of the sniper attacks that terrorised the US capital region for three weeks in 2002, was executed yesterday morning.

Muhammad was not heard to utter any words during the execution, which was performed by lethal injection at 9:11 pm (0211 GMT) at the Greensville Correctional Centre in Virginia. It took five minutes for him to succumb to the drugs after being injected at 9.06pm.

Asked if he wished to give a final statement, Muhammad remained silent.

Larry Traylor, a spokesman for Virginia Department of Corrections, said: "He didn't acknowledge us or look at us. He seemed quiet and relaxed, I never heard him utter a word or say anything in particular at all."

Relatives of his victims had gathered to watch his execution, just hours after Tim Kaine, the Virginia Governor, cleared the way for his death by denying his appeal for clemency. Governor Kaine said nine hours before the scheduled lethal injection that he found “no compelling reason” to set aside the death sentence.

Bob Meyers, whose brother Dean was murdered, was there. He told CNN's Larry King Live: "It was surreal watching the life sapped out of someone intentionally." Mr Meyers said it represented "probably a point of closure", adding: "But that was pretty much overcome just by the sadness that the whole situation generates in my heart. That he would get to the place where he did what he did and it had to come to this."

Marion Lewis, from Idaho, is the father of Lori Lewis Rivera, who was shot while vacuuming a van at a petrol station. “I want to see what he made me see,” he said. “He forced us to look at our little girl laying in a coffin. I want to see him take his last breath.”

Muhammad was unmoved when he heard that his appeal had failed. His lawyer, Jonathan Sheldon, said: "The guy is delusional, he’s paranoid. In a movie, when somebody is told that, then he reacts in a way that seems satisfying to people, especially victims, and he explodes, expresses remorse and then he goes to the last chamber with his last words.

“That’s not how it works. It doesn’t work like that because the majority of people [on death row] in this country have some mental illness and probably quite a few, up to 40 per cent, have severe mental illness.”

Many relatives of Muhammad’s victims had travelled thousands of miles to see his final moments. Muhammad was sentenced to death in 2003 after going on a three-week shooting rampage around the Washington area that killed ten people and wounded three. His teenage accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, was sentenced to life without parole.

Anti-capital punishment protesters gathered in a field outside the prison for a candlelit vigil organised by the pressure group Virginia Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

Muhammad requested a special last meal but, according to the Virginia Department of Corrections, asked for his choice not to be made public. He had to eat it at least four hours before his execution and was allowed a shower two hours before his death.

The condemned man was moved to Greensville from death row this month. He spent his last day locked in one of three cells built next to the death chamber.

Muhammad met with family members in the hours before his execution but did not have a spiritual adviser. If requested, a cleric would have been allowed to accompany Muhammad into the death chamber to offer final words of comfort.

His former wife published a book last week alleging that he intended to kill her, and said he went on his shooting rampage to make her murder look like another random killing.

Adjoining the room where the victims’ relatives were gathering, another 20 to 25 people were to watch the execution. They included at least six witnesses, stipulated by state law and chosen from Virginia residents, and the media.

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