Fort Hood Shooter Nidal Hasan's Execution Set for December 3

Nidal Malik Hasan, the former Army major convicted of killing 13 people in a 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, is scheduled to be executed by firing squad on December 3. The execution will take place at the same military base where the massacre occurred, marking the first U.S. military execution since 1961.

President Donald Trump approved the execution, according to an announcement from Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell. Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle stated that the execution is set to occur over 17 years after the attack. Hasan's death sentence was handed down in 2013 following the 2009 shooting.

Hasan claimed the attack was motivated by anger over an impending deployment to Afghanistan and a desire to protect Islamic and Taliban leaders from U.S. troops. He admitted to initiating the rampage, stating he wanted to prevent American soldiers from being deployed to kill Muslims. The Department of Defense, however, has classified the incident as an act of workplace violence rather than terrorism.

During the November 2009 attack, Hasan entered a Fort Hood medical readiness building carrying two firearms and multiple magazines. He opened fire on soldiers who were preparing for medical tests and vaccinations, shouting "Allahu Akbar," Arabic for "God is great." The shooting resulted in 13 deaths and 32 injuries, making it the deadliest attack on a domestic U.S. military installation.

Hasan was wounded by responding gunfire and paralyzed from the waist down. His execution will be the second carried out by firing squad since 2010, following a 2020 policy shift by the Justice Department that reauthorized firing squads as a permissible method of execution. The policy was part of an effort to expedite federal capital punishment cases.

Hasan is one of four inmates currently on death row within the U.S. Army's justice system. The Justice Department's adoption of the firing squad method follows its reauthorization of single-drug lethal injections using pentobarbital, a method previously used for 13 executions during the Trump administration. The Biden administration had paused the use of pentobarbital, citing concerns about potential pain and suffering.

While civilian executions by firing squad are rare, they are permitted in five states: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah. The first federal execution by firing squad in recent times occurred in March of the previous year, involving a South Carolina man convicted of murder.