JUST IN: Trump Approves Firing Squad For Infamous Fort Hood Terrorist
President Donald Trump has approved a recommendation that Nidal Malik Hasan — who murdered 14 U.S. service members and wounded dozens of others in a shooting attack at Fort Hood in 2009 — be executed by U.S. Army firing squad, the Pentagon announced Monday.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recommended the method, and the president approved it. The Secretary of the Army will now set the time and place of the execution, though no further details have been announced as of this report.
Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell announced the decision in a social media post. “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,” Parnell posted on X.
“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.”
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President Donald Trump has approved the use of a firing squad for the execution of Nidal Hasan, who was convicted in the 2009 massacre at Fort Hood in Texas. https://t.co/Nj41tf1GMr pic.twitter.com/IrwxKv1UMU
— CNN (@CNN) October 6, 2026
If carried out, the execution would be the first by the U.S. military since 1961, when Army Private John Bennett was hanged at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The last Army firing-squad execution occurred in 1945, when Private Eddie Slovik was shot for desertion in France during World War II.
Army procedures generally call for an execution to occur no sooner than 60 days and no later than 150 days after presidential approval, though the precise schedule remains with the Secretary of the Army.
Hasan, a former Army major and psychiatrist, carried out the attack on November 5, 2009, at a soldier readiness processing center on Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas. He entered the building, shouted “Allahu Akbar,” and opened fire with a handgun on soldiers who were largely unarmed and awaiting medical and administrative processing before deployment.
A total of 13 people were killed, 12 of whom were U.S. service members. One civilian employee was also among the dead, while 32 additional people were wounded. Hasan was himself shot and paralyzed from the waist down by responding civilian police officers.
A military court-martial convicted him in August 2013 of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder. The panel of officers sentenced him to death. Hasan represented himself at trial, acknowledged that he was the shooter, and described the attack as an effort to protect Islamic extremists abroad from U.S. military action.
He has remained on military death row at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth during the subsequent appeals process required under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
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