President Donald Trump has approved the execution by firing squad of Nidal Hasan, a US Army psychiatrist who shot dead 13 people at a military base in 2009, the Pentagon said Monday.
Hasan’s execution for the attack at Fort Hood in Texas, which also wounded more than two dozen people, will be the first carried out by the US military since 1961 . The Army secretary will set the time and place.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “has recommended — and President Donald J. Trump has approved — death by U.S. Army firing squad for convicted terrorist Nidal Malik Hasan,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a post on X .
“The Secretary of the Army will set the time and place of the execution. Judgement day for Hasan has finally come,” Parnell wrote .
Hasan was sentenced to death by a military jury in 2013 for carrying out the Al-Qaeda inspired mass shooting at Fort Hood .
He chose to conduct his own defense during the trial but called no witnesses and gave no testimony. Court-appointed defense attorneys expressed concern that he was seeking execution .
Attack At Fort Hood
Hasan, a US-born Muslim of Palestinian descent, opened fire on November 5, 2009, at a medical facility in the sprawling Fort Hood base.
The base served as a staging point for soldiers deploying to combat zones . Twelve of the dead and 30 of the wounded were soldiers. Hasan was shot and partially paralyzed by a civilian police officer who responded to the attack .
The court that convicted Hasan was told that he was opposed to the US military’s occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
He had also spoken online with an alleged Al-Qaeda figure, radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Al-Awlaki was an American citizen subsequently killed in a US drone strike in Yemen .
First Military Execution Since 1961
The US military has not carried out the death penalty since 1961 . The last service member executed was Private John Bennett. He was hanged in 1961 for raping an 11-year-old girl .
Hasan’s execution will therefore be the first by the US military in more than six decades .
The apparent last known execution by a US military firing squad was carried out “by musketry” in November 1945, according to the Death Penalty Information Centre .
