Fort Hood jihadist Nidal Hasan set to die by firing squad this year for killing 13 in first military execution in 65 years

DAILYMAIL.COM • 1d ago

By STEPHEN M. LEPORE, US SENIOR REPORTER 05:11 07 Oct 2026, updated 05:26 07 Oct 2026

The former Army major turned ‘jihadist’ who killed 13 people in a 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood will face execution by firing squad on December 3.

Nidal Malik Hasan is set to die at the same military base where he committed a massacre in the first US military execution since 1961.

The date announcement comes just a day after Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell confirmed that Donald Trump approved the execution.

Hasan claimed he launched the terror attack over anger about being deployed to Afghanistan and a desire to protect Islamic and Taliban leaders from US troops. He was sentenced to death following the 2009 shooting.

In a post on social media, acting Army Secretary Adam Telle said the execution of Hasan will take place at Fort Hood over 17 years after the massacre.

Hasan’s execution will be the first carried out by the United States military in 65 years.

Trump´s approval triggered a series of procedural steps toward carrying out the execution, but Hasan could put them on hold – potentially for years – with a habeas corpus appeal in the civilian federal court system, according to an article published in May in the magazine Army Lawyer.

Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell declared that Hasan will be just the second person since 2010 to be put to death by a firing squad Monday.

‘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 wrote on social media.

‘He killed 13 people and wounded 32 others while shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ during the attack,’ Parnell added.

‘The Secretary of the Army will set the time and place of the execution. Judgement day for Hasan has finally come.’

Hegseth also circulated Parnell’s message on X with a one-word reaction: ‘Justice.’

The Daily Mail has reached out to the White House for comment.

Hasan walked into a Fort Hood medical readiness building in November 2009 carrying two guns and several magazines of ammunition.

He shouted ‘Allahu Akbar!’ – Arabic for ‘God is great!’ – and opened fire on soldiers awaiting medical tests and vaccines.

The mass shooting was the deadliest attack on a domestic military installation in US history

Hasan was shot and paralyzed from the waist down in the resulting gunfire and was sentenced to death in 2013.

During his trial, Hasan told jurors he had ‘switched sides’ in what he called America’s war with Islam.

He admitted beginning the rampage and said he wanted to stop American soldiers from being deployed to kill fellow Muslims.

Government lawyers also said Hasan did not want to go on an impending deployment to Afghanistan.

The Department of Defense called the attack an act of workplace violence, not terrorism.

Hasan is one of four inmates on death row in the US Army’s justice system.

Since 1608, at least 144 civilian prisoners have been executed by shooting in America, nearly all in Utah.

Only four have occurred since 1977, when the use of capital punishment resumed after a ten-year pause.

The first of those, Gary Gilmore, caused a media sensation in part because he waived his appeals and volunteered to be executed.

When asked for his last words, Gilmore replied, ‘Let’s do it.’

In March of last year, Brad Sigmon, a South Carolina man who killed his ex-girlfriend’s parents with a baseball bat was executed by firing squad.

The Justice Department announced earlier this year it would adopt firing squads as a permitted method of execution as the Trump administration moves to ramp up and expedite capital punishment cases.

The Justice Department is also reauthorizing the use of single-drug lethal injections with pentobarbital that were used to carry out 13 executions during the first Trump administration – more than under any president in modern history.

The Biden administration had removed pentobarbital from the federal protocol over concerns about the potential for unnecessary pain and suffering.

The moves were announced as part of a broader push to step up federal executions after a moratorium under the Biden administration.

Only three defendants remain on federal death row after Democratic President Joe Biden converted 37 of their sentences to life in prison, though the Trump administration has so far authorized seeking death sentences against 44 defendants.

‘The prior administration failed in its duty to protect the American people by refusing to pursue and carry out the ultimate punishment against the most dangerous criminals, including terrorists, child murderers, and cop killers,’ Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement.

‘Under President Trump´s leadership, the Department of Justice is once again enforcing the law and standing with victims.’

The federal government has not previously included firing squad as a method of execution in its protocols, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Five states currently allow executions by firing squad: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah.

The pentobarbital protocol was adopted by Bill Barr, attorney general during Trump´s first term, to replace a three-drug mix used in the 2000s, the last time federal executions were carried out before Trump’s first term in office.

Attorney General Merrick Garland in the final days of the Biden administration withdrew the pentobarbital lethal injection policy after a government review of scientific and medical research found there remains ‘significant uncertainty’ about whether its use causes unnecessary pain and suffering.’

In 2020, under Barr’s leadership, the Justice Department published a rule in the Federal Register to allow the federal government to conduct executions by lethal injection or use ‘any other manner prescribed by the law of the state in which the sentence was imposed.’

A number of states allow other methods of execution, including electrocution, inhaling nitrogen gas or death by firing squad.

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