US President Donald Trump has approved the execution by firing squad of former US Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who was convicted over the 2009 Fort Hood shooting in Texas that killed 13 people and wounded 32 others.
The decision was announced by Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell, who said Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth recommended the execution and President Trump approved it.
“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.”
Mr Parnell said the Secretary of the Army would determine the time and location of the execution. No execution date has been announced.
Fort Hood shooting
Hasan, an Army psychiatrist at the time, was convicted by a military jury in 2013 on 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder.
He opened fire on 5 November 2009, at a medical facility at Fort Hood, where soldiers were being processed for deployment. The attack left 13 people dead and 32 wounded.
Hasan was sentenced to death following the military trial. He had represented himself during the proceedings and did not deny carrying out the shooting.
First US military execution since 1961
If carried out, Hasan’s execution would be the first execution by the US military since 1961, making Trump’s decision an exceptionally rare use of military capital punishment.
The decision also comes as the Trump administration has expanded the available methods of execution for federal prisoners to include firing squads, electrocution and gas asphyxiation, amid difficulties surrounding lethal-injection drugs.
Trump’s approval sets the execution process in motion, but Hasan can still pursue legal challenges and appeals that could delay the punishment.
The Army Secretary is expected to determine the next procedural steps, including where and when the execution will take place.
The decision has renewed attention on the US military’s rarely used death-penalty system and the debate over capital punishment.
For the families of those killed at Fort Hood, the approval marks a major development in a case that has remained on military death row for more than a decade. If the execution proceeds, it would also represent the first time in more than six decades that the US military has carried out a death sentence.
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