Pentagon sets a Fort Hood firing squad for Nidal Hasan on 3 December

A firing squad at Fort Hood is set for 3 December

The Pentagon has scheduled the execution of Nidal Hasan, the former Army major who shot dead 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, for 3 December at the Texas post. Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle said on Tuesday that the method will be a firing squad. It would be the first US military execution since 1961, and the first military firing squad since the end of the Second World War.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said on Monday that Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth had recommended the method and that President Donald Trump had approved it. "Judgement day for Hasan has finally come," Parnell wrote. Hasan, a psychiatrist from Virginia, killed 12 unarmed soldiers on active duty and a retired serviceman, and wounded 32 others, on 5 November 2009. Witnesses said he shouted "Allahu Akbar" during the attack. At his 2013 court-martial he admitted he was the gunman, said he believed he was protecting Muslims and the Taliban in Afghanistan, and apologised for "any mistakes." A panel sentenced him to death.

Why the method is the news, not the sentence

Hasan has been under a military death sentence for 13 years. The new fact is the date, the place, and the method. Firing squad, electrocution and gas asphyxiation were added in recent months to the methods the Trump administration allows for the gravest federal crimes. The military system is separate from the federal civilian system, and it has its own statute. The last military execution was the hanging of Army private John Bennett in 1961, for rape and attempted murder. No service member has been put to death since.

A firing squad is a lawful method under the Uniform Code of Military Justice once the president approves. Approval is the step that had not been taken across six previous administrations. Trump's approval, on Hegseth's recommendation, is what turns a 2013 sentence into a December date. Parnell noted the Arabic phrase shouted in the attack. That detail has been in the public record since 2009. It is being restated now as part of the announcement, not as a new finding.

What is still open before 3 December

Hasan is paralysed from the chest down from wounds police inflicted as they stopped the shooting. Any execution protocol has to account for that. The Army has not published the protocol. Courts can still receive filings between now and 3 December. The announcement does not say those filings are exhausted. It says the date is set.

The count of the dead has been stable since 2009: 13 killed, 32 wounded. The post was renamed Fort Cavazos in 2023 and the name Fort Hood was restored later. Telle's statement places the execution at Fort Hood. The useful new facts are the method, the approving officials, and the date: a firing squad, ordered by Trump on Hegseth's recommendation, on 3 December, at the post where the shooting happened.

The 2009 record the date sits on

The shooting began in a processing centre at Fort Hood where soldiers were preparing for deployment. Hasan was the psychiatrist assigned to that population. The court-martial record, and his own statement in 2013, treated the attack as deliberate. The apology for mistakes did not include a denial. The panel's death sentence has sat on that record since 2013, through appeals inside the military system.

Parnell's announcement and Telle's date convert that sentence into a calendar entry. Between Monday's approval and Tuesday's date, the public gained a method and a location. What it does not yet have is a published execution order with the names of the squad, the time of day, or a ruling that litigation is finished. Those are the items still able to move the 3 December date.