Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 in Fort Hood shooting, to be executed by firing squad

Nidal Malik Hasan, a former Army major who killed 13 people in a 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, will be executed by firing squad, the Pentagon announced Monday.

"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," chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell wrote on X .

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

The U.S. military has not carried out an execution since 1961 and has not used a firing squad to execute a service member since World War II.

The announcement of Trump's approval came days after a failed attempt to execute Christa Pike by lethal injection. The failed execution prompted Tennessee's governor to halt further executions this year and order a third-party review.

Asked whether the failed execution in Tennessee would lead him to seek changes to capital punishment, Trump called it "an interesting situation." He told reporters in Denton, Texas, that carrying out lethal injections "shouldn't be very difficult."

Trump's approval sets in motion a series of procedural steps toward carrying out Hasan's execution. But Hasan could put the process on hold — potentially for years — by filing a habeas corpus appeal challenging the legality of his detention in the civilian federal court system, according to an article published in May in the magazine Army Lawyer.

Hasan was convicted in a 2013 court-martial of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder and was sentenced to death. He exhausted his regular appeals in 2025.

What happened in the Fort Hood shooting?

Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, walked into the Soldier Readiness Processing Center, where soldiers were undergoing medical checkups before deploying, and witnesses testified he shouted "Allahu akbar" — Arabic for "God is great!" — before he opened fire with a laser-sighted handgun. He killed 13 people and wounded more than 30.

According to the Associated Press , Hasan said he carried out the shooting to stop soldiers from going to Afghanistan and killing his fellow Muslims.

He represented himself at his 2013 court-martial and mounted little defense, telling jurors that evidence would show he was the shooter and describing himself as a soldier who had "switched sides."

The Pentagon did not explain why Hasan would be executed by firing squad rather than lethal injection, the method specified in the military's current execution regulations. It also did not say whether those regulations would need to change.

The Army adopted a plan in February for carrying out military executions at the federal government's execution facility in Terre Haute, Ind., ABC News reported in June.

Known as Operation Resolute Justice, the plan calls for condemned service members to be transferred there from the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and for the Army to coordinate with the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The Army is to be ready to carry out an execution no sooner than 60 days and within 150 days of presidential approval. ABC's report did not specify an execution method.

The Justice Department separately directed the Bureau of Prisons in April to expand its protocol for federal civilian executions to include methods beyond lethal injection, including firing squads. That change does not apply to military executions.

Firing squads have also recently returned at the state level. Five states allow them, according to the Death Penalty Information Center : Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah.

Idaho made the firing squad its primary execution method on July 1 after a law signed in 2025 took effect. South Carolina carried out three firing squad executions in 2025, the first uses of the method in the U.S. since 2010. Condemned prisoners there can choose among authorized execution methods.

After Pike's failed execution, several top Republicans in Tennessee said they want to explore alternative ways of executing condemned prisoners.

U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, the state's Republican candidate for governor, told the AP , "If it's lethal injection, if it is electric chair, what we do know is we have to find a way to do this — and do it successfully."

Top legislative leaders have already spoken with Blackburn about potential changes to state execution laws during their 2027 session.

"We want to broaden it, include more methods," Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton said. "What those are as of today, I'm not sure. But I don't think there's any method that's off the table at this point."

Death sentences are extremely rare in the military justice system, and executions are even rarer. Four men, including Hasan, are currently on the military's death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

President George W. Bush approved the execution of Army Spc. Ronald Gray in 2008, but a judge put it on hold. Gray remains at Fort Leavenworth.

The last person executed under the military justice system was Pvt. John Bennett, who was hanged in 1961 for the rape and attempted murder of an 11-year-old girl.