Army Secretary Adam Telle revealed Tuesday night that convicted Fort Hood mass shooter Nidal Hasan will face a firing squad at the same Texas base where he carried out his 2009 attack.
Telle, 50, announced in an X post that the execution is scheduled for December 3 at 1 p.m. At Fort Hood, the very installation Hasan terrorized nearly sixteen years ago. The former Army major and psychiatrist killed 12 U.S. Service members and one civilian while wounding 32 others during the November 2009 shooting.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell disclosed Monday that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth had recommended the firing squad method and President Trump had approved it.
“Judgement day for Hasan has finally come,” Parnell wrote in a separate X post announcing the method of death.
Parnell noted in that same post that Hasan was “shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ during the [2009] attack.”
Hasan attacked troops who were lined up to receive immunizations at the Texas Army base. A responding police officer shot him in the back, leaving him paralyzed.
At his trial, Hasan told a military judge that he was defending “the leadership of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the Taliban.”
He was sentenced to death by a military court in 2013.
Hasan will be the first service member executed by the armed forces since 1961.
The scheduling of the December 3 execution marks a rare use of military capital punishment in modern American history. The 2009 attack stunned the nation as one of the deadliest mass shootings on a U.S. Military installation. Hasan, who had been serving as an Army psychiatrist, opened fire on his fellow soldiers in a processing center where personnel were preparing for deployment.
The decision to carry out the execution at Fort Hood itself underscores the military’s intent to close the loop on one of its most painful chapters. The base, now officially renamed Fort Cavazos in 2023 though still widely known by its former name, has worked to move beyond the shadow of the massacre that left dozens of families shattered and a community in mourning.
Hasan’s case has wound through years of appeals and procedural delays since his 2013 conviction. The former major’s statements at trial, where he sought to justify the killings as protection of Taliban leadership, offered little remorse and complicated efforts to commute his sentence. His paralysis from the police response has meant years of medical incarceration while legal processes continued.
The firing squad method itself represents a historically significant choice for military executions. While lethal injection has become standard in most civilian jurisdictions, the military retains alternative methods under its code of justice. Hegseth’s recommendation and Trump’s approval signal a deliberate return to older military tradition for this particular case.
Hasan remains in military custody as preparations proceed for the December execution at Fort Hood.