WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump has ordered the use of a firing squad to execute the former US Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in a 2009 shooting spree the gunman later described as retaliation for US wars in the Muslim world, the Pentagon said on Monday.

The decision to put former US Army Major Nidal Hasan to death by army firing squad was approved by the president at the recommendation of Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said on X.

Parnell noted that Hasan killed 12 unarmed active-duty soldiers and a retired serviceman, and wounded 32 others. The secretary of the army will set the time and place of the execution, Parnell said.

A military jury sentenced Hasan to death in August 2013, after finding him guilty of 45 counts of premeditated murder and attempted premeditated murder for opening fire with a laser-sighted handgun in a medical facility at the sprawling central Texas military base.

The shooting came weeks before Hasan, now 56, was scheduled to be deployed to Afghanistan. He was left partially paralysed and confined to a wheelchair.

In a statement responding to Trump’s decision, the group Death Penalty Action, which opposes capital punishment, said: “There is nothing Donald Trump loves more than the power to kill.” Military executions are rare, and under the Uniform Code of Military Justice a death sentence imposed by court-martial may not be carried out “until approved by the president.”

Published in Dawn, October 7th, 2026