A long-running Fort Hood case that has haunted the US military for more than a decade is moving toward its final chapter after President Donald Trump ordered execution by firing squad for the former Army psychiatrist convicted of killing 13 people in the 2009 attack.
Former US Army Major Nidal Hasan will be put to death by U.S. Army firing squad following approval by Mr Trump, acting on a recommendation from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said on X.
Mr Parnell said Hasan shouted “Allahu Akbar” – God isgreatest in Arabic – as he carried out the shooting, which left 12 unarmed active-duty soldiers and a retired serviceman dead and wounded 32 others.
The Secretary of the Army will determine when and where the execution will be carried out, Mr Parnell said, adding: “Judgment day for Hasan has finally come.”
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has recommended — and President Donald J. Trump has approved — death by U.S. Army firing squad for convicted terrorist Nidal Malik Hasan, the jihadist who opened fire on unarmed American soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009. He killed 13 people and wounded 32 others while shouting “Allahu Akbar” during the attack. The Secretary of the Army will set the time and place of the execution. Judgement day for Hasan has finally come.
The order comes after the Trump administration recently widened the list of allowable execution methods for the most serious federal crimes, adding firing squad alongside electrocution and gas asphyxiation.
The expanded menu of federal execution options was driven in part by growing obstacles to securing lethal-injection drugs, and by practical difficulties that have sometimes made those executions hard to complete.
One recent example cited by critics occurred last week in Tennessee, where plans to execute a woman for the first time in more than 200 years unraveled when prison staff botched an effort to administer a lethal injection, leaving death-row inmate Christa Pike alive but unconscious.
Hasan’s death sentence dates back to August 2013, when a military jury condemned him after convicting him of 45 counts of premeditated murder and attempted premeditated murder. Prosecutors said he opened fire with a laser-sighted handgun inside a medical facility at the large central Texas post.
Twelve unarmed active-duty soldiers and a retired serviceman were killed in the 2009 attack
The 2009 shooting unfolded just weeks before Hasan, now 56, was due to deploy to Afghanistan. Police shot him during his arrest, leaving him partially paralyzed and reliant on a wheelchair.
In response to Mr Trump’s decision, Death Penalty Action — an organisation that opposes capital punishment — issued a statement saying: “There is nothing Donald Trump loves more than the power to kill.”
Executions carried out by the military are unusual, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice bars a court-martial death sentence from being carried out “until approved by the president.”
Death Penalty Action said Hasan’s execution, if carried out, would be the first military execution since 1961.
The Death Penalty Information Center said the 1961 military execution was by hanging, and reported that the most recent known U.S. military firing-squad execution was carried out “by musketry” in November 1945.
At least five states still list firing squads as an execution method, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. In 2025, South Carolina conducted the first firing-squad execution in the United States in 15 years.
