US President Donald Trump has approved the execution of former US Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan by firing squad over the 2009 Fort Hood mass shooting in Texas.
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Hasan was sentenced to death by a military jury in 2013 after being convicted of killing 13 people and injuring more than two dozen others in the attack.
The execution, if carried out, would be the first by the US military since 1961.
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The approval was announced by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a post on X:
“President Donald J. Trump has approved death by U.S. Army firing squad for convicted terrorist Nidal Malik Hasan,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a post on X.
“The Secretary of the Army will set the time and place of the execution. Judgement day for Hasan has finally come,” Parnell wrote.
Hasan was sentenced to death in 2013 after a military jury found him guilty of carrying out the deadly attack at Fort Hood.
During his trial, Hasan chose to represent himself. He did not call witnesses, give testimony or attempt to deny the charges. His court-appointed defense attorneys had previously expressed concerns that he appeared to be seeking the death penalty.
Hasan, a US-born Muslim of Palestinian descent, opened fire on November 5, 2009, at a medical facility inside Fort Hood, a major US military installation that served as a staging point for troops preparing for deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Thirteen people were killed in the attack, while more than 30 others were wounded. Twelve of those killed and 30 of the wounded were soldiers.
Hasan was shot by a civilian police officer who responded to the scene and was left partially paralysed as a result of his injuries.
The former Army psychiatrist had opposed the US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. He had also communicated online with Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical cleric who was linked to Al-Qaeda and was later killed in a US drone strike in Yemen.
The latest decision brings Hasan’s long-running death sentence closer to being carried out, with the Secretary of the Army expected to determine the date and location of the execution.
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