WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has approved execution by U.S. Army firing squad for Nidal Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist convicted of killing 13 people in the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood, the Pentagon announced Monday.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recommended the firing-squad method and the president signed off, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a post on X. The secretary of the Army will set the time and place of the execution, Parnell said.
Hasan, a former Army major, opened fire Nov. 5, 2009, at Fort Hood’s Soldier Readiness Processing Center, killing 12 service members and one civilian and wounding 32 others. A military jury convicted him in 2013 of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder and sentenced him to death.
Hegseth replied to Parnell’s announcement with a single word: ‘Justice.’
Hasan has been held on military death row at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. His appeals were exhausted when the Supreme Court declined to take his case in March 2025.
If carried out, it would be the first U.S. military execution since 1961, when Army Pvt. John Bennett was hanged at Fort Leavenworth.
