Defense Department Secretary Pete Hegseth is seeking the death penalty for former Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people and injured dozens of others at Texas’s Fort Hood nearly 16 years ago.
Hegseth is asking President Trump for final approval for the military execution of Hasan, an ex-Army psychiatrist who gunned down 13 people and wounded 32 others at the Army base near Killeen, Texas, in November 2009.
“I am 100 percent committed to ensuring the death penalty is carried out for Nidal Hasan. This savage terrorist deserves the harshest lawful punishment for his 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood. The victims and survivors deserve justice without delays,” Hegseth said in a statement to The Hill on Wednesday.
The White House did not comment on the record.
If approved by the White House, it would be the first military execution in more than six decades. The last military execution took place in 1961, when former soldier John Bennett was hanged.
In early November 2009, Hasan opened fire at service members with a semiautomatic handgun, killing 13 people, including a soldier who was pregnant. Hasan admitted to the shooting and was sentenced to death in 2013.
He was convicted of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder by a military jury.
The Supreme Court denied Hasan’s appeal in April.
Hasan is on death row in the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.
Hasan was born in 1970 in Arlington, Va. He is the son of Palestinian immigrant parents. Hasan served nearly two decades in the Army.
“I considered those who were trying to help the U.S. undermine the Taliban’s attempt to establish Sharia (God’s) Law as the supreme law of the land and replace it with something else like a democracy that doesn’t rule by God’s law the enemies of God, and thus worthy of fighting/killing,” Hasan wrote in a letter in 2017.
Hegseth’s request was first reported by The Daily Caller.
Updated at 10:17 p.m. EDT
