In this undated handout photo from the website of the U.S. Government Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences downloaded on November 6, 2009, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. (Photo by U.S. Government Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences via Getty Images)
(TNND) — An Army major who killed 13 people in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting will face execution by firing squad after President Donald Trump approved the sentence.
If carried out, Nidal Malik Hasan’s execution would be the first by the U.S. military since 1961. The Army secretary will determine the time and location of the execution, according to Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell.
“Judgement day for Hasan has finally come,” Parnell wrote on X.
Hasan was an Army psychiatrist when he walked into a medical building at Fort Hood, Texas, where soldiers were receiving routine medical checkups, shouted “Allahu akbar” — Arabic for “God is great” — and opened fire with a laser-sighted handgun. Thirteen people were killed and more than 30 others were injured.
He later said he carried out the attack to stop soldiers from deploying to Afghanistan and killing fellow Muslims. Hasan made little effort to defend himself at trial, telling jurors the evidence would show he was the shooter and describing himself as a soldier who had “switched sides.”
Death sentences are extremely rare in the military justice system, and executions are even rarer. Four men, including Hasan, are on military death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. President George W. Bush approved the execution of Army Spc. Ronald Gray in 2008, but a judge put it on hold. Gray remains at Fort Leavenworth.
The last person executed by the military was Pvt. John Bennett, who was hanged in 1961 after being convicted of raping and murdering an 11-year-old girl.
Trump’s approval comes days after Tennessee’s failed attempt to execute Christa Pike by lethal injection. Pike remains unconscious in the hospital on life support.
Asked whether the botched execution would lead him to seek changes to capital punishment, Trump told reporters, “It shouldn’t be very difficult.”
After President Joe Biden’s Justice Department imposed a moratorium on federal executions in 2021, Trump ordered the department to lift it and again pursue the death penalty when he returned to office in January 2025.
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Editor’s note: The Associated Press contributed to this article.
