President Trump has approved death by U.S. Army firing squad for Fort Hood terrorist Nidal Malik Hasan, nearly 17 years after the jihadist murdered 13 people and left families waiting for justice.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell announced Monday that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth recommended the sentence and that President Donald J. Trump signed off on it. The Army secretary will now set the time and place.
If carried out, it would be the first successful presidential approval of a U.S. military execution since 1961. For the families of the dead and the 32 wounded, the long legal grind may finally end in judgment.
Fox News reported the approval after Parnell posted the decision. The case has dragged through court-martial, automatic appeals, and a failed bid for Supreme Court review while victims’ relatives aged and waited.
Parnell did not hold back words. He identified Hasan as the jihadist who opened fire on unarmed American soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009.
On X, the chief Pentagon spokesman wrote:
"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 continued:
"He killed 13 people and wounded 32 others while shouting 'Allahu Akbar' during the attack."
And he closed the point hard:
"Judgment day for Hasan has finally come,"
The New York Post reported the same approval path: Hegseth’s recommendation, Trump’s sign-off, and the Army’s duty to schedule the execution. Hasan was sentenced to death by a military court in 2013.
On Nov. 5, 2009, Hasan, then an Army officer stationed at Fort Hood, took a pistol and a.357 revolver. He went to noon prayers at a mosque, then drove to a soldier readiness processing facility, an administrative building full of unarmed troops.
He opened fire. He shouted “Allahu Akbar.” Thirteen people died. Thirty-two more were wounded. Law enforcement ended the rampage in a firefight. Hasan took multiple gunshot wounds, was detained, and was rushed to intensive care.
A Sanity Board report later recorded his own words about intent. Hasan said:
"I shot to kill,"
He denied depressive, manic, psychotic, anxiety, or cognitive symptoms during the attack, according to that report. The record undercuts any soft-pedaling of what he did.
Roughly four years after the massacre, a court-martial sentenced Hasan to death. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a death sentence triggers automatic appeals, first to the U.S. Army Criminal Court of Appeals, then to the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces.
An Army press release from the sentencing period described the government’s close. Lead prosecutor Col. Michael Mulligan rested the case on the morning of Aug. 27 after two days of emotional testimony from surviving widows and parents of those murdered on Nov. 5, 2009.
Joleen Cahill, widow of retired Chief Warrant Officer Michael Cahill, testified that her husband gave his life trying to stop Hasan. She described the devastation the shooting left in her family. That is the human cost the system was built to answer.
A court upheld the death sentence in early 2025. Hasan’s lawyers then sought Supreme Court review, citing procedural objections to how the trial was run. The Court denied review. The sentence stood.
Breitbart noted the historic weight: if the execution proceeds, it will be the first U.S. military execution since 1961. Hasan’s 2013 death sentence for the Fort Hood attack is now moving toward completion under Trump’s approval.
The last service member executed by the U.S. military was Pvt. John Bennett, hanged on April 13, 1961, after he attempted to murder an 11-year-old girl in Austria. President George W. Bush approved a military execution in 2008, but a federal court blocked it.
Trump’s approval, if carried through, would break that long drought. The method is a U.S. Army firing squad. The Army secretary still must set the clock and the location. The Department of War advanced the request. Hegseth recommended it. The president approved it.
That is how accountability is supposed to work when a soldier turns his weapons on his own unarmed comrades in the name of jihad. The victims were not abstractions. They were American soldiers and one civilian doing their duty inside a processing center on a U.S. base.
For nearly 17 years the system ground forward while Hasan lived. Appeals ran their course. The Supreme Court closed the door. Now the executive branch has done what the sentence required: cleared the path to carry it out.
Justice delayed is still justice owed. The families who buried 13 Americans after Fort Hood should not have had to wait this long, and the military should finish the job the court-martial started.
