The Secretary of War has given the recommendation, and President Donald Trump has approved the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, a former major in the US Army convicted of the attack at Fort Hood, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell announced on social media on Monday.
Hasan killed 13 unarmed US soldiers and wounded 32 others in a crowded medical building where soldiers deploying were waiting for check-ups and vaccines. Twelve of the dead and 30 of the wounded were soldiers. The attack took place on 5 November 2009 and was the deadliest non-combat attack on a US military base in history. Hasan was shot and partially paralysed by a civilian police officer who responded to the attack.
Hasan was convicted on 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder. A jury of 13 officers unanimously recommended the death penalty. During the military trial in 2013, he said he believed he was protecting Muslims and the Taliban in Afghanistan, but later admitted in court that he was the shooter and apologised for 'any mistakes'. The court was told that he opposed the US occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and had spoken online with radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a propagandist for al-Qaeda and a US citizen who was later killed in a US drone strike in Yemen.
Hasan chose to represent himself during the trial, but did not call witnesses, did not give evidence and did not attempt to contest the charges. Legal representatives expressed concern that Hasan was seeking execution. He is a US-born Muslim of Palestinian descent and a military psychiatrist from Virginia, who is currently one of four prisoners on death row in the US military.
Parnell said that the Secretary of the Army would determine the time and place of the execution. A military execution requires the approval of the US President under military law, as well as a review of the appeal and a final decision on the legality before implementation. The US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces declared the military death penalty unconstitutional in 1983, but it was restored the following year by an executive order from President Ronald Reagan.
The execution of Nidal Malik Hasan will be the first military execution by firing squad since the end of the Second World War. Execution by firing squad is rare. Last year, an execution by firing squad took place in South Carolina, the first in the state and the first time that method had been used in the US in 15 years. Four other states allow the use of the firing squad, including Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah. Most executions in the US take place at the state level, with 27 states, the military and the federal government still having the death penalty as a legally available option.
Trump was a proponent of the federal death penalty and reinstated it by executive order on the first day of his administration in January 2025. Under his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, the Department of Justice had issued a moratorium on the use of the death penalty. The executive order signed by Trump describes the death penalty as 'a key means of deterring and punishing those who commit the most heinous crimes and acts of lethal violence against US citizens'.
The attack at Fort Hood is part of a series of incidents at US military bases. In 2025, a soldier opened fire at a US military base in Georgia, wounding five colleagues before being subdued and arrested. In 2019, a US sailor was seriously injured and two others were killed in a base in Hawaii, and in the same year, a Saudi student killed three people in a military facility in Florida. A US-born citizen of Kuwait attacked two military installations in Tennessee in 2015, killing four Marines and sailors; the FBI concluded that the violence was inspired by 'a foreign terrorist group'. Two years earlier, a man killed 12 people and wounded eight in the Washington Navy Yard before he was killed by police.
