President Trump Approves Firing Squad Execution for Fort Hood Shooter

(US President Donald Trump. Photo by ANGELA WEISS / AFP)

US President Donald Trump has approved the execution by firing squad of former Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who was convicted over the 2009 Fort Hood shooting that killed 13 people and wounded 32 others.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell announced this in a post online, on Monday.

He said Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth recommended the execution and Trump signed off on it.

He called Hasan a convicted terrorist and said the Secretary of the Army will decide the time and place.

Hasan was found guilty by a military jury in 2013 of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder.

The attack happened on November 5, 2009, at a military facility in Fort Hood, Texas, where soldiers were being processed for deployment.

Hasan was an Army psychiatrist at the time.

He was sentenced to death after the trial.

The approval starts the process toward his execution, but no date has been announced yet.

If it goes ahead, it will be the first execution carried out by the US military since 1961.

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

— Sean Parnell (@SeanParnellASW) October 5, 2026