Trump Approves Firing Squad for Fort Hood Shooter Nidal Hasan

President Donald Trump has authorized the execution of Nidal Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist convicted of killing 13 soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009. If carried out, the firing squad execution would mark the first time the U.S. military has put one of its own to death in more than six decades.

White House and Pentagon Announce the Decision

Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell confirmed the authorization in a post on X, stating that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had formally recommended the method of execution and that Trump had signed off on it, according to The Guardian World. "The Secretary of the Army will set the time and place of the execution," Parnell wrote, adding that "judgement day for Hasan has finally come." The announcement reflects the administration's broader posture on national security matters, consistent with the assertive tone Trump has maintained across a range of policy fronts — from confrontations with NATO allies to domestic legislative battles.

The 2009 Attack and the Military Trial

On November 5, 2009, Hasan opened fire inside a medical processing facility at Fort Hood, a sprawling base in Texas that served as a deployment hub for troops heading to Iraq and Afghanistan. Twelve of the thirteen people killed were soldiers; thirty others were wounded. Hasan himself was shot by a responding civilian police officer and left partially paralyzed.

A military jury convicted Hasan in 2013 and sentenced him to death. The proceedings were unusual from the outset: Hasan represented himself, called no witnesses, offered no testimony, and made no effort to contest the charges against him. Court-appointed standby defense attorneys raised concerns at the time that Hasan may have been attempting to engineer his own execution.

Ideology and Alleged Foreign Ties

Prosecutors established during trial that Hasan, a U.S.-born Muslim of Palestinian descent, had grown increasingly hostile to American military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Evidence presented in court showed he had communicated online with Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born al-Qaeda propagandist who was later killed in a drone strike in Yemen. Those connections led authorities to characterize the attack as an act of terrorism rather than a conventional criminal act.

A Rare Category of Violence

While mass shootings in the United States have become tragically routine, attacks at military installations remain comparatively uncommon. In recent years, several such incidents have nonetheless occurred. A soldier wounded five fellow service members at a Georgia base in 2025. A U.S. sailor fatally shot two people at a Hawaii base in 2019, while a Saudi aviation student killed three at a Florida military facility the same year. In 2015, a Kuwaiti-born U.S. citizen attacked two military sites in Tennessee, killing four Marines and a Navy sailor in an attack the FBI linked to foreign terrorist influence.

What Comes Next

With Trump's approval now on record, the decision on the specific date and location of the execution rests with the Secretary of the Army. Hasan has spent more than a decade on military death row, and this authorization moves the process into its final administrative phase. The case has long served as a focal point in debates over how the military justice system handles terrorism-related offenses committed by service members. Trump, who has made strong executive action a defining feature of his second term — reflected in decisions ranging from trade policy to national security — framed the approval as a matter of long-overdue accountability.