President Donald Trump has approved the execution of former US Army major Nidal Hasan by firing squad, after he was convicted of killing 13 people and wounding more than 30 others at Fort Hood in 2009.
Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, said on Monday that Hasan would become only the second person since 2010 to be executed by firing squad. The Secretary of the Army will determine the time and place of the execution.
“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,” Mr Parnell wrote on social media.
He added: “He killed 13 people and wounded 32 others while shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ during the attack.” Mr Hegseth reposted the statement with the one-word response: “Justice.”
Fort Hood attack
Hasan entered a medical readiness building at the Texas military base in November 2009 carrying two guns and several magazines of ammunition. He shouted “Allahu Akbar”, meaning “God is great” in Arabic, before opening fire on soldiers waiting for medical examinations and vaccinations.
The attack was the deadliest shooting at a domestic US military installation. Hasan was shot during the ensuing gunfire and left paralysed from the waist down.
He was sentenced to death in 2013. During his trial, Hasan said he had “switched sides” in what he described as America’s war with Islam, and admitted starting the attack.
He said he wanted to prevent American soldiers from being deployed to kill fellow Muslims. Government lawyers also argued that he had not wanted to go on an impending deployment to Afghanistan.
The Department of Defense described the attack as workplace violence rather than terrorism.
Firing squad executions
Hasan is one of four inmates on death row in the US Army’s justice system. At least 144 civilian prisoners have been executed by shooting in America since 1608, almost all of them in Utah, although only four such executions have taken place since capital punishment resumed in 1977 after a ten-year pause.
Five states currently permit executions by firing squad: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah. Brad Sigmon, a South Carolina man convicted of killing his former girlfriend’s parents with a baseball bat, was executed by firing squad in March last year.
The Justice Department announced earlier this year that firing squads would be adopted as a permitted execution method as the Trump administration seeks to increase and accelerate the use of capital punishment.
It is also reauthorising single-drug lethal injections using pentobarbital. The drug was used in 13 executions during Mr Trump’s first administration, more than under any other president in modern history.
The Biden administration removed pentobarbital from the federal execution protocol over concerns that it could cause unnecessary pain and suffering. Former attorney general Merrick Garland withdrew the policy in the final days of the administration after a review found “significant uncertainty” over its effects.
Only three defendants remain on federal death row after President Joe Biden converted 37 death sentences to life imprisonment. The Trump administration has so far authorised prosecutors to seek death sentences against 44 defendants.
