U.S. President Donald Trump has approved the execution by military firing squad of Nidal Malik Hasan, the former U.S. Army officer and psychiatrist convicted of carrying out the 2009 massacre at Fort Hood, Texas. Trump approved the execution following a recommendation from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell announced.
Hasan opened fire on Nov. 5, 2009, inside a soldier processing center at Fort Hood, where troops were preparing for deployments including to Afghanistan. During the attack, Hasan shouted “Allahu Akbar” before opening fire with a handgun equipped with a laser sight. Thirteen people — 12 soldiers and a former serviceman — were murdered and 32 others were wounded. Hasan was shot at the scene and taken into custody. In 2013, a military court convicted Hasan on 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder and sentenced him to death.
During his trial, Hasan effectively acknowledged carrying out the shooting and argued that he had acted to prevent American soldiers from deploying to Afghanistan and harming Muslims. Following Trump’s approval, the secretary of the Army is expected to determine the date and location of Hasan’s execution. Hasan could still seek to delay the sentence through additional petitions in federal court.
If the sentence is ultimately carried out, it would mark the first execution conducted by the U.S. military since 1961. The last known execution by a U.S. military firing squad took place in 1945. Following Trump’s decision, Parnell delivered a blunt message from the Pentagon: “Hasan’s day of reckoning has finally arrived.”