Who is Nidal Hasan, whom Trump agreed to execute by firing squad?

U.S. President Donald Trump has approved the execution by firing squad of Nidal Hasan, a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and psychiatrist who opened fire and killed 13 people at a military base in 2009, the Department of Defense (Pentagon) announced. On September 5, 2009, Hasan, an American Muslim of Palestinian descent, shot people with a semi-automatic pistol inside a medical facility at Fort Hood in Texas, which was being used as a staging area for deploying troops to combat zones, killing 13 and injuring more than 30. Hasan’s execution will be the first carried out by the U.S. Army since 1961.

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Barnell, posting on the platform X, said that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recommended, and President Donald Trump approved, the execution by firing squad by a U.S. Army execution team against Nidal Malik Hasan. The spokesperson added, “The Secretary of the Army will set the date and location for the execution, and the day of reckoning has finally come for Hasan.”

A military jury sentenced Hasan to death in 2013 for carrying out the mass shooting at Fort Hood in Texas. Hasan chose to represent himself during the trial, but he called no witnesses, offered no testimony, and did not even attempt to deny the charges against him. Defense attorneys appointed by the court expressed concern that he was seeking the death penalty. All the victims were soldiers preparing to travel to Iraq on November 5, 2009. Hasan was wounded by a civilian police officer who responded to the attack, leaving him with partial paralysis. The court found that Hasan opposed the U.S. military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and that he had communicated online with Anwar al-Awlaki, a prominent leader of al-Qaeda, who was later killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen.