Nidal Malik Hasan, a former Army officer and psychiatrist who killed 13 people and injured 32 others during 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 — death by U.S. Army firing squad for convicted terrorist Nidal Malik Hasan, the jihadist who opened fire on unarmed American soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009,” Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell announced. “He killed 13 people and wounded 32 others while shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ during the attack.
“The Secretary of the Army will set the time and place of the execution,” he continued. “Judgement day for Hasan has finally come.”
If Hasan’s execution is indeed carried out by a firing squad, it would mark the first such case for the service since Jan. 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 at the gallows in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, after he was convicted of raping and attempting to kill a young girl.
Hasan, who was born in northern Virginia, walked into a Fort Hood readiness processing center 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 in the attack and spent nearly a year recovering in various hospitals.
“He looked me straight in the eyes as he pointed the gun at me, and a split second later, I’m on the floor 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 in 2013 said he carried out the attack in support of the Taliban.
At the time, Hasan requested a delay in court proceedings so he could ready a new legal strategy that would show he acted “in defense of others.”
Asked by presiding Judge Col. Tara Osborn who he was defending, Hasan replied, “The leadership 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 subsequently transferred to Fort Leavenworth, where he has been incarcerated on death row.
Jonathan Lehrfeld contributed to this report.
J.D. Simkins is Editor-in-Chief of Military Times and Defense News, and a Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq War.
