Nidal Malik Hasan, a former Army officer and psychiatrist who killed 13 people and wounded 32 others during a mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, will be executed by a US Army firing squad, the Pentagon announced Monday. “Secretary of War Pete Hegseth recommended (and President Donald J. Trump approved) death by US Army firing squad for convicted terrorist Nidal Malik Hasan, the jihadist who opened fire on unarmed US soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009,” announced Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell. “He killed 13 people and wounded 32 others while shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ during the attack.” been convicted of raping and attempting to kill a girl. Hasan, who was born in northern Virginia, walked into a Fort Hood readiness processing center on Nov. 5, 2009, and opened fire with a semi-automatic pistol. Former Army Sergeant Patrick Zeigler, a two-time combat veteran, was shot four times in the attack and spent nearly a year recovering in various hospitals. on the ground with a hole in his head,” he told the Killeen Daily Herald in 2023. At his court-martial, Hasan, now 56, admitted to the shooting and in 2013, he said he carried out the attack in support of the Taliban. At the time, Hasan requested a delay in the court process so he could prepare a new legal strategy showing he acted “in defense of others.” When asked by Judge Col. Tara Osborn who he was defending, Hasan responded: “The leaders of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the Taliban.” Hasan was convicted by a military jury in August 2013, which recommended that he be sentenced to death. He was later transferred to Fort Leavenworth, where he remains imprisoned on death row.
