Trump approves execution by firing squad of Fort Hood shooter, Pentagon says | American military

Donald Trump approved the execution by a US military firing squad of Nidal Hasan, sentenced to death for the murder of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009, Pentagon chief spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a social media post.

Hasan, who was a military psychiatrist, would become the first American soldier to be executed by the US military in more than 60 years.

Parnell said in an article on

He added: “The Secretary of the Army will appoint the time and place of execution. The day of judgment for Hasan has finally arrived.”

Hasan was sentenced to death by a military jury in 2013 for carrying out the mass shooting on the Fort Hood base.

He chose to conduct his own defense during the trial, but called no witnesses, gave no testimony, and made no attempt to deny the accusations. Court-appointed lawyers expressed concern that he was seeking execution.

Hasan, a U.S.-born Muslim of Palestinian descent, opened fire on Nov. 5, 2009, at a medical facility at the sprawling military base, which served as a staging point for soldiers deployed to combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Twelve of the dead and 30 of the injured 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 opposed the US military’s occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and that Hasan had spoken online with radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaida propagandist and US citizen later killed in a US drone strike in Yemen.

Although mass shootings in the United States are concerning, they are rare at military installations.

In 2025, a soldier opened fire on a US military base in the state of Georgia, wounding five of his comrades before being accosted and apprehended.

In 2019, a U.S. Marine shot and killed two people and injured a third at a base in Hawaii, while a Saudi military student shot and killed three people at a military installation in Florida the same year.

A Kuwaiti-born U.S. citizen attacked two military installations in Tennessee in 2015, killing four Marines and a sailor. The FBI concluded that the violence was inspired by a “foreign terrorist group.”

Two years earlier, a man killed 12 people and injured eight at the Washington Navy Yard in the US capital before being shot dead by officers.