Donald Trump approves the shooting of Nidal Hasan, a former army psychiatrist sentenced to death in 2009 for the attack on the Fort Hood military base in which he killed 13 people and injured 32.
Hasan was convicted in recent years by a military jury at the end of a court-martial trial in which the accused had given up his defense.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “recommended, and Donald Trump approved, the death sentence by firing squad by a U.S. Army firing squad for the convicted terrorist Hasan,” who had shouted “Allah Akbar” during the attack. The Secretary of Defense will decide the time and place of execution. Judgment day for Hasan has finally arrived,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said.
All but one of the dead were soldiers, including a pregnant soldier who had thrown herself to the ground begging for her unborn child to be spared. The shooting ended only when Hasan was shot in the back by a soldier who had responded to the fire. The former major was left paralyzed from the waist down. The former psychiatrist, a Muslim of Palestinian origins, said he had acted to protect Islamic rebels abroad from US aggression. He had admitted to having opened fire in a crowded waiting room where dozens of soldiers were waiting for their last medical examination before deployment to the front in Iraq and Afghanistan.