President Trump has cleared the way for Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan to face an Army firing squad nearly 17 years after the attack that killed 13.
Fox News reported that Trump approved death by U.S. Army firing squad for Nidal Malik Hasan on the recommendation of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, closing a long stretch of legal delay after the 2009 massacre at Fort Hood.
Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, opened fire on unarmed American soldiers on November 5, 2009. He killed 13 people and wounded 32 others while shouting “Allahu Akbar.” He was court-martialed, sentenced to death in 2013, and has sat on military death row ever since.
The Army secretary will set the time and place. If carried out, it would be the first U.S. military execution since 1961.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said this shortly after the approval.
Parnell wrote on X that judgment day for Hasan had finally arrived and described the condemned man in plain terms.
"Judgement day for Hasan has finally come."
He went further in the same message, naming the crime and the victims.
"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."
Just The News carried the same Pentagon statement and noted the basic logistics still ahead: the Secretary of the Army will choose when and where the sentence is carried out.
"The Secretary of the Army will set the time and place of the execution."
Hasan’s death sentence did not move quickly. Military appellate courts upheld it, and further review ended after the sentence was sustained in early 2025 and the Supreme Court declined to take the case. That left the final decision with the commander in chief.
Breitbart News reported the planned firing-squad execution and relayed Associated Press detail that four men, including Hasan, remain on the military’s death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
ABC News, cited in that same account, said the military has not carried out an execution in more than 60 years. Separate reporting pinned the last one to 1961, when Pvt. John Bennett was hanged at Fort Leavenworth.
The November 5, 2009 attack was not a random workplace shooting. Hasan targeted soldiers at a U.S. Army post, shouted an Islamic battle cry while he fired, and left 13 dead and 32 wounded. He has been held as a convicted murderer under military law ever since.
Trump’s approval of an Army firing squad ends the political hesitation that left a settled capital sentence sitting unused. The method is specific. The recommendation came from Hegseth. The remaining step is scheduling by the Army secretary.
Families of the dead and the wounded have waited through the court-martial, the appeals, and years of confinement at Leavenworth. The record now shows a completed legal path and a presidential decision to carry out the sentence the military courts imposed.
A death sentence that sits unenforced teaches the wrong lesson to every enemy who targets American troops. Trump ordered the sentence carried out, and the Army should finish the job.
