For the first time since World War II, the US military will execute a man by firing squad after getting approval from Donald Trump.
In 2009, Nidal Malik Hasan, a former US Army major, fatally shot 13 unarmed people, including 12 soldiers, and injured over 30 others.
He is one of only four inmates on the American military’s death row and would be the first US soldier to be executed by the army in over 60 years.
The army psychiatrist from Virginia was at Fort Hood, a base in Texas, when he opened fire on a crowded medical building in the deadliest non-combat attack on a military base.
At his trial in 2013, Hasan said he believed he was protecting Muslims and the Taliban in Afghanistan, according to the BBC.
He apologised for ‘any mistakes’ he made and admitted that he was the gunman in court.
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell wrote on X that ‘judgment day for Hasan has finally come’.
Only five states allow the use of a firing squad – South Carolina, Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah – but a military execution is different.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth had made the recommendation of a military execution by firing squad, which Trump approved.
The law requires appellate review and a final judgment on its legality in order to move forward.
The US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces deemed the military death penalty unconstitutional in 1983, but it was brought back by then-President Ronald Reagan the following year.
In 2025, Trump reinstated the federal death penalty after President Joe Biden had issued a moratorium on its use.
The executive order describes capital punishment as ‘an essential tool for deterring and punishing those who would commit the most heinous crimes and acts of lethal violence against American citizens’.
A state execution by firing squad was carried out last year in South Carolina, chosen by the inmate.
Brad Sigmon, who was convicted in 2001 of a double murder, opted for the firing squad over lethal injection or the electric chair.
It was the first time a firing squad had been used in the state, and the first of that style of execution had been used anywhere in the US in 15 years.
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