Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist who screamed "Allahu Akbar" before gunning down 13 people and wounding 32 others at Fort Hood, Texas in November 2009, is going to face a firing squad.
He's been sitting on death row for seventeen years. That ends now under the Trump administration.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell confirmed the decision Monday: "Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has recommended — and President Donald J. Trump has approved — death by U.S. Army firing squad." The announcement marks the first military execution since 1961, when Private John Bennett was put to death in Austria.
The Pentagon's statement was brief. "Judgment day for Hasan has finally come." The timing and location of the execution will be determined by the Secretary of the Army.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth had telegraphed the move back in September. "I am 100% committed to ensuring the death penalty is carried out for Nidal Hasan," he said at the time. "The victims and survivors deserve justice without delays." Monday, he posted a single word to the Department of War's social media account.
"Justice."
Hasan was an Army psychiatrist — a man literally tasked with the mental health of soldiers — who turned his weapon on the people he was supposed to protect. He opened fire in a processing center where troops were preparing to deploy. The massacre was the deadliest attack on a U.S. military installation in history, and it happened on American soil.
For years the attack was officially classified as "workplace violence." Not terrorism. Workplace violence. As if a man shouting "Allahu Akbar" while executing unarmed soldiers was upset about not getting a raise at work. The survivors fought for years just to receive Purple Hearts — recognition that what happened to them was an act of war, not an HR incident.
Hasan is paralyzed from the waist down — shot during the rampage — and has been receiving taxpayer-funded medical care for nearly two decades. The 32 survivors have been managing their own wounds.
The last military execution was sixty-five years ago. That's not because the military stopped producing death-eligible cases. It's because the system stopped following through. Case after case stalled in appeals, got commuted, got lost in bureaucratic limbo while administrations changed and priorities shifted. Hasan's case became the longest-running example of a death sentence that everyone agreed was justified but nobody would carry out.
What changed is straightforward. An administration that views the death penalty as a tool of justice rather than an embarrassment to be managed. A Secretary of War who made Hasan's execution a personal commitment before taking office and followed through within his first year. A president who approved it without conditions.
Thirteen soldiers went to work that morning in November 2009. They never came home. Thirty-two more carry the scars. The man responsible has been on death row longer than some of those soldiers were alive.
The firing squad has a date to keep.