Trump approves Army firing squad for Fort Hood’s Hasan

Sean Parnell posted the decision on X on October 5, 2026. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth had recommended — and President Donald J. Trump had approved — death by U.S. Army firing squad for Nidal Malik Hasan.

Parnell wrote that Hasan was 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,” Parnell added. “Judgement day for Hasan has finally come.”

Adam Telle confirmed the schedule days later. The execution is set for December 3, 2026, at Fort Hood, Texas, at 1 p.m. local time — the same post where the shooting happened.

On November 5, 2009, Hasan entered a medical building where soldiers were preparing for deployment. He carried 400 rounds of ammunition and fired 146. He shouted “Allahu Akbar” as he shot. When people rushed him with a chair, he shot them too. Thirteen died. Thirty-two were wounded. A responding officer shot Hasan and ended the attack. The wounds left him paralyzed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair.

A military jury convicted him in August 2013 on 45 counts of premeditated murder and attempted premeditated murder and sentenced him to death. Hasan represented himself. He called no witnesses and gave no testimony. In his opening statement he said, “the evidence will clearly show that I am the shooter. And the dead bodies will testify that war is an ugly thing.” He later told the court “that we are imperfect Muslims trying to establish the perfect religion … I apologize for any mistakes I made in this endeavor.” An appellate brief recorded him saying, before the attack, “If they deploy me…they will pay.”

He has sat on military death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, since the sentence. He is one of four prisoners there under military capital judgment.

Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a death sentence from a court-martial cannot be carried out until the president approves it and appellate review is complete. That requirement is not a political flourish. It is the statute. In 1983 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces held the military death penalty unconstitutional. President Ronald Reagan restored it by executive order the next year. The framework has been settled law for four decades. Trump’s approval fits inside that design: the jury convicts, the appellate courts review, and the president, as commander in chief, decides whether the sentence stands.

If the sentence is carried out on December 3, it will be the first U.S. military execution since 1961, when Pvt. John Bennett was hanged at Fort Leavenworth for rape and attempted murder. It will be the first U.S. military firing squad execution since Pvt. Eddie Slovik was shot in France in 1945 for desertion. The method is the one Hegseth recommended and Trump approved. Army rules leave the means to the Secretary of the Army. Parnell’s announcement did not offer a further public rationale.

Death Penalty Action answered the decision in a statement: “There is nothing Donald Trump loves more than the power to kill.” The record supplies a narrower account. Hasan admitted he was the shooter. A panel of officers weighed the evidence and returned a death sentence. The Uniform Code of Military Justice then required presidential approval before any execution could proceed. Seventeen years after the attack, that approval has been given. The power in question is the one the statute assigns, not a personal appetite.