United States President, Donald Trump, has approved the execution of former US Army psychiatrist, Major Nidal Hasan, by firing squad for his role in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting in Texas, in which 13 people were killed and 32 others wounded.
The decision was announced by Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell on October 5, following a recommendation from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Parnell said the execution would be carried out by an Army firing squad, with the Secretary of the Army responsible for determining when and where it will take place.
“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.”
Parnell also pointed to Hasan’s use of the phrase “Allahu Akbar” — Arabic for “God is greatest” — during the attack. The shooting killed 12 unarmed active-duty soldiers and one retired serviceman.
Hasan was convicted by a military jury in August 2013 and sentenced to death after being found guilty of 45 counts of premeditated murder and attempted premeditated murder. Prosecutors said he used a laser-sighted handgun to open fire inside a medical facility at the sprawling military installation in central Texas.
The attack occurred shortly before Hasan was due to deploy to Afghanistan. He was shot by police while being apprehended and was left partially paralysed, subsequently requiring a wheelchair.
The decision comes after the Trump administration expanded the list of permitted federal execution methods to include firing squads, electrocution and gas asphyxiation, alongside lethal injection. The changes were partly prompted by difficulties in securing drugs used for lethal injections, as well as problems that have sometimes arisen during the procedure itself.
Questions surrounding lethal injection have again emerged after an attempted execution in Tennessee went wrong last week. Prison personnel failed to properly administer the lethal injection to death-row inmate Christa Pike, leaving her alive but unconscious. Pike was due to become the first woman executed by Tennessee in more than two centuries.
Death Penalty Action, an organisation that opposes capital punishment, criticised Trump’s decision. Responding to the announcement, the group said: “There is nothing Donald Trump loves more than the power to kill.”
Executions resulting from military court-martial sentences are subject to presidential approval under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The law provides that a death sentence imposed by court-martial cannot be carried out “until approved by the president.”
Should Hasan’s execution proceed, it would reportedly be the first US military execution since 1961, according to Death Penalty Action.
The Death Penalty Information Center says the 1961 military execution was conducted by hanging. The centre has also identified a November 1945 execution by “musketry” as the apparent last known execution carried out by a US military firing squad.
Firing squads remain authorised in at least five US states, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. South Carolina conducted the country’s first firing-squad execution in 15 years in 2025.
