Trump has approved a military firing squad for Nidal Malik Hasan, the former Army major who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, the Pentagon announced Monday — clearing the way for the first U.S. military execution in more than 60 years.
Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell announced the decision on social media on October 5, 2026: "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." Hegseth reacted with a single word: "Justice."
The Fort Hood massacre
On November 5, 2009, Hasan — then a U.S. Army major and psychiatrist — opened fire with a semi-automatic handgun inside the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood, Texas, targeting unarmed troops preparing to deploy to Afghanistan and Iraq. Thirteen people were killed — 12 service members and one civilian — and 32 more were wounded, in one of the worst attacks on a U.S. military installation on home soil.
At his 2013 court-martial, where he represented himself and offered little defense, a military jury convicted Hasan of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder and sentenced him to death. He has sat on military death row at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, ever since — one of only four inmates on the military's death row — and exhausted his appeals in 2025. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a military death sentence cannot be carried out without the president's explicit approval.
"Judgement day for Hasan has finally come"
Parnell added that the Secretary of the Army will set the time and place of the execution: "Judgement day for Hasan has finally come." Under Army policy, the execution must occur within 150 days of presidential approval but not sooner than 60 days.
The logistics have been months in the making. An internal Army planning document issued in February 2026 — dubbed "Operation Resolute Justice" and reviewed by ABC News — directs the Army to coordinate with the Federal Bureau of Prisons to transfer the four condemned men from Fort Leavenworth to the federal execution facility in Terre Haute, Indiana, where the 13 federal executions of Trump's first term took place. The plan orders preparations so executions can proceed "no later than 150 days from the date of presidential approval."
A historic first
If carried out, the execution would be the first by the U.S. military since 1961, when Army Pvt. John Bennett was hanged at Fort Leavenworth — and the first military firing squad since January 31, 1945, when Pvt. Eddie D. Slovik was executed in France for desertion during World War II.
The move also lands in a national moment of renewed scrutiny over execution methods: Tennessee's September 30 lethal-injection execution of Christa Pike reportedly went wrong, while South Carolina carried out three firing-squad executions in 2025, reviving debate over whether the firing squad is more reliable than lethal injection.
Seventeen years after the Fort Hood massacre, the Pentagon says the waiting is over. Whether the execution proceeds within the 150-day window — or gets caught in what one Army lawyer journal called a "potentially lengthy post-appellate court process" — will decide when Hasan's death sentence is finally carried out.
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