Donald Trump has approved a firing squad execution for Nidal Hasan, the former US Army psychiatrist convicted of killing 13 people at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009.
Hasan will be the first US soldier executed by the military in more than 60 years if the order is carried out. The decision was announced by Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell.
The execution method was recommended by Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and approved by the president, Mr Parnell said in a statement. The Army secretary will determine when and where it takes place.
“Judgement day for Hasan has finally come,” Mr Parnell wrote.
Hasan was sentenced to death in August 2013 after a military jury found him guilty of 45 counts of premeditated murder and attempted murder. He opened fire with a handgun inside a medical facility at the Texas military base.
The attack killed 12 unarmed active-duty soldiers and a retired serviceman, while 32 others were wounded. Police arrested Hasan at the scene after shooting him, leaving him partially paralysed.
The massacre occurred weeks before Hasan was due to deploy to Afghanistan. During his court-martial, he said he had carried out the shooting to stop the soldiers travelling there and killing fellow Muslims, and made almost no effort to defend himself.
The Trump administration added firing squad executions to the approved methods of carrying out death sentences in April, alongside gas asphyxiation and electrocution.
Military executions are rare in the United States and can be authorised only by the president under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The last known execution of a US military member took place in 1961 and was carried out by hanging.
The apparent last US military execution by firing squad was conducted “by musketry” in November 1945, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
