President Trump has approved death by U.S. Army firing squad for Fort Hood killer Nidal Malik Hasan, ending years of delay after the 2009 massacre that left 13 dead.
Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell announced that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth recommended the method and that President Donald J. Trump signed off. The Secretary of the Army will set the time and place. Just The News reported the move marks the first U.S. military execution since 1961.
Parnell laid out the decision in plain terms on social media.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell stated:
"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 added the body count and the words Hasan shouted as he fired.
Parnell continued:
"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."
Hegseth circulated the announcement and answered with one word: "Justice." The Washington Examiner carried the same official account of the approval and the pending Army scheduling order.
In November 2009, then-Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan walked into a medical readiness building at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas, carrying two guns and several magazines. He opened fire on unarmed soldiers. Thirteen people died. Dozens more were wounded. Hasan himself was shot and left paralyzed from the waist down.
A military jury sentenced him to death in 2013. He remains one of four inmates on U.S. Army death row. At trial he admitted starting the attack and told jurors he had “switched sides” in what he called America’s war with Islam. He said he wanted to stop American soldiers from deploying to kill fellow Muslims and claimed anger over an impending Afghanistan deployment and a desire to protect Islamic and Taliban leaders.
Fox News reported the execution is set for 1 p.m. Central Time on Dec. 3 at Fort Hood, nearly 17 years after the massacre.
For years the case sat. The Department of Defense labeled the attack workplace violence rather than terrorism. That framing downplayed the motive Hasan himself announced while shooting. Families of the dead and wounded waited while appeals and policy fights dragged on.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche tied the Hasan decision to a wider restoration of capital punishment. Blanche said the prior administration refused to pursue and carry out the ultimate punishment against the most dangerous criminals, including terrorists, child murderers, and cop killers. Under President Trump’s leadership, he said, the Justice Department is again enforcing the law and standing with victims.
That record is concrete. President Biden converted 37 federal death sentences to life in prison. Only three defendants remained on federal death row after those commutations. In the final days of the Biden administration, Attorney General Merrick Garland withdrew the pentobarbital lethal-injection protocol, citing “significant uncertainty” about pain and suffering. A moratorium on federal executions took hold.
Trump’s first term ran 13 executions using the pentobarbital protocol. Attorney General Bill Barr’s Justice Department published a 2020 rule allowing federal executions by lethal injection or any other manner prescribed by the law of the state where the sentence was imposed. Earlier this year the Justice Department announced it would adopt firing squads as a permitted method and reauthorize single-drug lethal injections. The Trump administration has so far authorized seeking death sentences against 44 defendants. Readers tracking that shift have also seen Trump push the death penalty for those who kill police as officer deaths hit historic lows.
The New York Post noted Hasan killed 12 U.S. service members and one civilian, wounded 32 others, and would be the first service member executed by the armed forces since 1961 if the sentence is carried out.
Firing squads have a long American history and a short modern one. At least 144 civilian prisoners have been executed by shooting in America since 1608, nearly all in Utah. Only four firing-squad executions have occurred since capital punishment resumed in 1977. Five states currently allow the method: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah. South Carolina put Brad Sigmon to death by firing squad in March of last year after he killed his ex-girlfriend’s parents with a baseball bat. The Death Penalty Information Center has stated the federal government had not previously listed firing squad in its own protocols.
Gary Gilmore, the first post-1977 firing-squad case, waived appeals, volunteered for execution, and said, “Let’s do it.” Hasan never showed that kind of acceptance. He stays on Army death row until the Secretary of the Army sets the clock. The same capital-punishment questions surface in civilian courts, including cases where the death penalty stays in play at trial for high-profile killings.
Breitbart reported a military jury found Hasan guilty on all charges of murder and attempted murder in 2013, locking in the death sentence now moving toward final action.
The Daily Mail first detailed Parnell’s announcement, Hegseth’s recommendation, and Trump’s approval, along with the long trail from the Fort Hood medical building to Army death row.
Enforcement stories keep landing in the same lane. When the system finally removes violent offenders, whether through capital sentences or removal from the country, victims and lawful residents see the difference, the same pattern visible when a violent illegal immigrant is deported after arrest rather than released back into American communities.
Hasan shouted “Allahu Akbar” while he shot unarmed soldiers. He told a jury he had switched sides. He said he wanted to protect Taliban leaders and stop deployments to Afghanistan. Those are his words and his deeds. Calling the attack workplace violence stripped the religious and wartime motive out of an assault on a U.S. military post. It left families without the full truth and left a death sentence in limbo for more than a decade.
Trump’s approval closes that chapter. The Army will choose the hour. The method is the firing squad Hegseth recommended and the president accepted. After the commutations, the protocol withdrawals, and the years of delay, the sentence imposed in 2013 is finally moving toward completion.
Soldiers who report for duty on a U.S. base should not have to wonder whether their own government will treat a massacre as ordinary crime or as the terrorist attack the shooter himself described. Justice delayed for the Fort Hood dead is still justice owed, and this time the order is signed.