US President Donald Trump has approved the military execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, the former Army officer responsible for the 2009 Fort Hood shooting that killed 13 people and wounded 32 others.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell announced the decision Monday, nearly 17 years after the attack.
Hasan opened fire on November 5, 2009, shouting "Allahu Akbar" as he attacked soldiers at the Texas military installation. If the execution proceeds, it would mark the first US military execution authorized by a president and carried out since 1961. Such executions are reserved for the most serious offenses under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
The last US service member to be executed was Pvt. John Bennett, who was hanged on April 13, 1961, after attempting to murder an 11-year-old girl in Austria. Former President George W. Bush also approved a military execution, but a federal court blocked it in 2008.
Before the Fort Hood attack, Hasan took a pistol and a .357 revolver to a mosque where he attended noon prayers. He then drove to a soldier readiness processing facility, where he knew soldiers would be unarmed. Witness accounts described him opening fire on the area with the greatest concentration of soldiers after shouting "Allahu Akbar." "I shot to kill," Hasan stated in a sanity board report.
Hasan was eventually apprehended following a gunfight with law enforcement in which he sustained multiple gunshot wounds.
Four years later, a military court convicted Hasan and sentenced him to death.
The death sentence triggered an automatic appeals process through the military justice system. The Fort Hood Public Affairs Office explained that the case would be reviewed by the US Army Court of Criminal Appeals and subsequently the US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces.
After a court upheld Hasan's sentence in early 2025, his legal team petitioned the Supreme Court, raising procedural objections to the trial. The court declined to review the case.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth subsequently recommended that the execution proceed. Following Trump's approval, the Army secretary will determine when and where it takes place, Parnell said.
"Judgment day for Hasan has finally come," Parnell wrote in Monday’s statement.