Trump approves firing squad execution for Fort Hood shooter

Nidal Malik Hasan killed 13 unarmed US soldiers and injured more than 30 others

President Donald Trump has approved the execution of the Fort Hood shooter by firing squad—the first execution of this kind in the US since the Second World War.

Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, killed 13 unarmed US soldiers and injured more than 30 others at Fort Hood, near Killeen, Texas, in 2009.

He walked into a medical building where the soldiers were getting checkups, shouted “Allahu akbar"—Arabic for “God is great!”—and opened fire with a laser-sighted handgun.

The Army secretary will decide a time and place for Hasan's execution. Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell wrote in a post on X, adding, "Judgment day for Hasan has finally come."

The US military last carried out the death penalty in 1961.

Trump’s approval triggers a series of procedural steps toward carrying out the execution, but Hasan could put them on hold, potentially for years, with a habeas corpus appeal in the civilian federal court system, according to an article published in May in the magazine Army Lawyer.

At the time of the shooting, Hasan said he had wanted to stop the soldiers from going to Afghanistan and killing Muslims and made almost no effort to defend himself at trial.

He told jurors that evidence would show he was the shooter and described himself as a soldier who had “switched sides."

Death sentences are extremely rare in the military justice system, and executions even rarer. Four men, including Hasan, are currently on the military's death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

President George W. Bush approved the execution of Army Spc. Ronald Gray in 2008, but it was put on hold by a judge, and he remains at Leavenworth.

The last man executed in the military system was Pvt. John Bennett, hanged in 1961 for raping an 11-year-old girl.

Trump approved the firing squad execution days after a failed attempt to execute Christa Pike by lethal injection pushed Tennessee’s governor to halt further executions this year and order an independent review.

Trump resumed the federal death penalty after an informal moratorium during previous administrations.

The federal government executed 13 people between 2020 and early 2021, contributing to making Trump the most prolific execution president in over 130 years.

Asked whether the botched execution in Tennessee would lead him to seek changes to capital punishment, Trump said it was “an interesting situation.”

“It shouldn’t be very difficult,” Trump said of carrying out lethal injections.

Source: itv.com, Staff, October 6, 2026

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde

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