More than six decades have passed since the U.S. military last carried out an execution. The Pentagon says that stretch of time is about to end.
Nidal Hasan, the former Army psychologist and major who carried out the 2009 attack at Fort Hood in Texas, will die by firing squad, the Pentagon announced Monday.
Once the sentence is carried out, it will be the first military execution in more than 60 years.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell delivered the decision in a written statement.
“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 killed 13 people and wounded 32 others while shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ during the attack.”
Parnell said the Secretary of the Army will set the time and place of the execution. He then added a line of his own: “Judgement day for Hasan has finally come.”
The chain of approval ran through two offices. Hegseth made the recommendation, and Trump signed off on it.
The statement named both the method and the branch that will carry it out: death by U.S. Army firing squad.
Hasan opened fire on November 5, 2009, at the Soldier Readiness Processing Center on the Fort Hood post in Texas. At the time, he held the rank of major and served as an Army psychologist.
Twelve soldiers and one civilian died in the shooting. Thirty-two other people suffered injuries, which brought the total number of casualties to 45.
Authorities shot and wounded Hasan before taking him into custody.
The military justice system convicted him on 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder.
A sentence of death arrived in 2013. Hasan went to a military detention center at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, according to ABC News.
Hasan is one of four death row inmates currently in the Army justice system. The Pentagon’s announcement concerns his case.
Military history shows how long the gap has grown. Pvt. John Bennet was the last service member put to death, in 1961.
Bennet had been convicted of raping and attempting to kill an 11-year-old girl in Austria. NBC News reports that the military hanged him.
Firing squads belong to an even earlier chapter. The last service member executed by that method died in 1945 for desertion during World War II.
Sixteen years separate that 1945 firing squad execution from the 1961 hanging.
Two earlier cases therefore frame Monday’s announcement: one involved a firing squad and a desertion conviction, the other involved a hanging and a conviction for a crime against a child in Austria.
Hasan’s execution, once carried out, would end a gap of more than 80 years for the firing squad method and more than 60 years for any military execution.
In its announcement, the Pentagon labeled Hasan a “convicted terrorist” and a “jihadist.” It also described the soldiers he targeted as “unarmed American soldiers.”
Parnell’s statement tied the order directly to the toll at Fort Hood, citing 13 people killed and 32 wounded.
Under the announcement, the Secretary of the Army will determine two specifics: when the execution takes place and where it happens.
The dates trace the case in sequence. Hasan attacked in 2009, a military court sentenced him to death in 2013, and the Pentagon announced his method of execution on Monday.
Both ABC News and NBC News covered the announcement, and their reporting supplied details on Hasan’s confinement and the history of military executions.
The order now moves to the Secretary of the Army, who will decide when and where the firing squad carries it out.
