Trump approves execution by firing squad for Fort Hood gunman
US President Donald Trump has approved executing Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, by army firing squad, the Pentagon says. He would be the first US soldier executed by the military in over 60 years.
Pentagon chief spokesperson Sean Parnell announced on social media that President Donald Trump has approved a death sentence by army firing squad for Nidal Hasan, a former army psychiatrist. The recommendation came from defense secretary Pete Hegseth.
According to Parnell, the Secretary of the Army will determine the time and location of the execution. Hasan would become the first US soldier executed by the military in more than six decades.
The crime and trial
Hasan, a US-born Muslim of Palestinian descent, opened fire at a medical facility on the Fort Hood military base on 5 November 2009. The base served as a deployment staging point for troops heading to Iraq and Afghanistan. The attack killed 13 people, 12 of them soldiers, and wounded 30 others. A civilian police officer shot Hasan, leaving him partially paralyzed.
A military jury sentenced Hasan to death in 2013. He represented himself at trial, calling no witnesses, offering no testimony, and making no attempt to contest the charges — behavior that led his court-appointed attorneys to voice concern he was actually seeking execution.
Testimony at trial indicated Hasan opposed the US military's presence in Iraq and Afghanistan and had communicated online with radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaida propagandist and American citizen later killed in a US drone strike in Yemen.
A rare but recurring pattern
While mass shootings remain common in the US, they are relatively uncommon at military installations. Similar incidents have included a 2025 shooting at a Georgia base that wounded five soldiers, fatal shootings in 2019 at bases in Hawaii and Florida, a 2015 attack in Tennessee that killed five service members and was linked by the FBI to inspiration from a foreign terrorist group, and a 2013 shooting at the Washington Navy Yard that killed 12 people.
