According to a report by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on October 7, the U.S. Pentagon announced that a former U.S. Army Major will be executed. This will be the first time in over 60 years that a death sentence has been carried out at the military level in the United States.
In 2009, Nidal Hassan, a former U.S. Army major, shot and killed 13 unarmed American soldiers at Fort Hood, leaving 32 others injured.
On May 5, Sean Penner, a spokesperson for the Pentagon, announced on social media that U.S. Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth had put forward this suggestion, and Trump approved it.
The U.S. Army Secretary stated on the 6th that the execution will take place at Fort Hood in Texas on December 3rd. This will be the first time in over a century since World War II that the U.S. military has carried out an execution using a firing squad.
Panell wrote on X: "The day of Hassan's trial has finally come."
It is reported that Hassan was a psychiatric doctor in the U.S. Army from Virginia, with the rank of major. In 2009, he killed 13 soldiers at a base in Texas. Later, in court, he admitted to being the shooter and apologized for “any mistakes.”
During the military court trial in 2013, he stated that he believed he was protecting the Muslims and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The massacre on November 5, 2009, was the most deadly non-combat attack in the history of the American military base. The attack occurred inside a crowded medical building, where soldiers who were about to be deployed were waiting for medical examinations and vaccinations.
Hassan is currently one of the four prisoners in a death row cell at the U.S. military prison.
According to military law, military executions require the approval of the President of the United States. Additionally, they must undergo an appeal review and receive a final ruling regarding their legality before they can be carried out.
In 1983, the United States Armed Forces Appellate Court ruled that the death penalty for the military was unconstitutional. However, the following year, President Ronald Reagan issued an executive order to reinstate the death penalty for the military.
Military executions and state-level executions belong to different systems. In most states in the United States, executions are carried out at the state level; some regions of the US (27 states), the military, and the federal government still use the death penalty as a legally available option.
Execution by shooting is a rather rare method of execution in the United States. Last year, South Carolina carried out an execution by shooting, which was the first time this state did so, and it was also the first time in 15 years that this method of execution was used in the United States.
Trump has been a supporter of federal capital punishment, and on the first day of his presidency in January 2025, he issued an executive order to restore federal capital punishment. During the tenure of then-U.S. President Joe Biden, the U.S. Department of Justice issued an order to suspend federal capital punishment.
Trump's executive order describes the death penalty as an important means of "deterring and punishing those who commit the most heinous crimes against American citizens and deadly violent acts."
