Nidal Malik Hasan, a former Army officer and psychiatrist who killed 13 people and injured 32 others in a mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, will be executed by a U.S. Army firing squad, the Pentagon announced Monday.
“Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has recommended – and President Donald J. Trump has approved – the death by US military firing squad of terrorist Nidal Malik Hasan, the jihadist who opened fire on unarmed US soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009,” announced Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell. “He killed 13 people and injured 32 others while shouting “Allahu Akbar” during the attack.
“The Secretary of the Army will appoint the time and place of execution,” he continued. “The day of judgment for Hasan has finally arrived. »
If Hasan’s execution is indeed carried out by firing squad, it would be the first such case for the service since January 31, 1945, when Pvt. Eddie D. Slovik was executed by a U.S. Army firing squad in France for desertion during World War II.
The last death sentence carried out by the U.S. military was in 1961, when Army Pvt. John Bennett was executed by hanging on the gallows at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, after being convicted of the rape and attempted murder of a young girl.
Hasan, born in northern Virginia, walked into a readiness facility at Fort Hood on Nov. 5, 2009, and opened fire using a semi-automatic handgun.
Thirteen people were killed, including a pregnant soldier.
Former Army Staff Sgt. Patrick Zeigler, a two-time combat veteran, was shot four times during the attack and spent nearly a year recovering in various hospitals.
“He looked me straight in the eye as he pointed the gun at me, and a split second later I find myself on the ground with a hole in my head,” he told the Killeen Daily Herald in 2023.
At his court martial, Hasan, now 56, admitted to the shooting and said in 2013 that he had carried out the attack in support of the Taliban.
At the time, Hasan requested a postponement of the legal proceedings so that he could prepare a new legal strategy that would show that he had acted “in defense of others.”
Asked by the presiding judge, Colonel Tara Osborn, who he was defending, Hasan replied: “The leaders of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the Taliban.”
Hasan was convicted by a military jury in August 2013, which recommended he be sentenced to death.
He was then transferred to Fort Leavenworth, where he was incarcerated on death row.
Jonathan Lehrfeld contributed to this report.
JD Simkins is editor of the Military Times and Defense News, and a Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq War.
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