Nidal Hasan was found guilty of killing thirteen people and injuring several others in the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood in Texas. President Donald Trump has authorized the execution of Hasan by firing squad. It would be the first time a soldier in the US Army has been executed since World War II and the first time an armed service member has been given the death penalty in 65 years.

The Pentagon revealed on Monday nite that Trump authorized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's recommendation to execute Hasan by firing squad.

Hasan's execution is set on December 3 at 2 p.m. ET at Fort Hood, according to an announcement made on Tuesday by Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle.

"He shouted 'Allahu Akbar' during the attack, killing 13 people and wounding 32 others," Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell wrote in a post on X. "Hasan's day of judgment has finally arrived."

"Justice" was Hegseth's response to Parnell's post.

In July 2013, a jury of 13 officers found Hasan, a doctor and major in the US Army, guilty of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder. The jury unanimously recommended that Hasan be executed.

In court, he acknowledged that he was the shooter in the Nov. 5, 2009 incident and expressed regret for "any mistakes."

The massacre at Fort Hood

Hasan, a citizen of Palestinian origin who was born in the United States, claimed he was aiming to defend the Taliban and its commanders from the American military by attacking soldiers he was scheduled to deploy with to Afghanistan.

During his trial, Hasan told the military judge, "There was sufficient provocation that these were deploying soldiers that were going to engage in an illegal war."

Initially, Hasan entered a processing center at Ford Hood and started shooting at soldiers who were there for last-minute medical examinations before being sent. Hasan followed the troops out the rear door and confronted the cops as they attempted to escape outside.

After Hasan was hit and collapsed to the ground following a gunfight with two cops, Senior Sgt. Mark Todd and Sgt. Kim Munley, he was taken into custody.

Testimony claims that Todd rushed forward, kicked Hasan's gun away, flipped him onto his stomach, and searched him. At that point, he discovered a cell phone, an extra rifle, and magazines of ammunition.

Officer Duane Mitchell of the Army Criminal Investigation Division reported that 177 unused ammunition in 20- and 30-round magazines were found in Hasan. Additionally, he clarified that he had two gunsights to aid in his accurate shooting: a green laser that works well in sunshine and a red laser for low light.

Hasan needs a wheelchair because the wound that day left him paraplegic from the waist down.

Military personnel are rarely executed.

Pvt. Eddie Slovik, who was found guilty of desertion by a military court, was the last Army soldier to be killed by fire on January 31, 1945, during the waning months of World War II in Europe.

At Fort Leavenworth in Kansas in 1961, the last execution of any kind by the US Army occurred when Pvt. After being found guilty of raping and trying to kill an 11-year-old Austrian girl, John Bennett was hanged.

The Death Penalty Information Center reports that 135 US military personnel have been put to death since 1916. The president, who also has the authority to commute a death sentence, must approve any execution for any of the fifteen offenses that carry the death penalty.

According to a May 2026 article in the military's Army Lawyer publication, the Secretary of the Army decides the manner and date of execution once the president gives his or her approval. The execution date must occur within 60 to 150 days following the president's approval.

According to the department's spokeswoman, CNN has contacted the Pentagon for additional details and clarification over whether the date and time would be determined by the defense secretary or the secretary of the Army.

According to the article, convicted inmates may still challenge a death sentence by submitting a habeus corpus petition, which questions the validity of their detention. A stay of execution while the appeal proceeds through the legal system may result from such a filing.

In addition to Hasan, three other soldiers are incarcerated on death row at Leavenworth, the Defense Department's sole maximum-security facility. According to Army Lawyer, they were all found guilty of various felonies, including murder.

Private Slovik Pvt. was executed. In 1945, a 12-person firing squad executed Eddie Slovik in France, making him the last known US soldier to be executed by this manner.

Since the war, Slovik's case has received a lot of interest because he was the lone American deserter in World War II out of an estimated 50,000.

The narrative served as the basis for the 1974 television film "The Execution of Private Slovik," which starred Martin Sheen.

In a 2013 interview with NPR, journalist Charles Glass, the author of "The Deserters," stated that Slovak "wasn't a bad soldier; he just simply - he was afraid" and that Slovak chose to give himself in rather than run away.

Glass and the nonprofit organization Reprieve, which opposes the death penalty, claim that even though his execution was done in secret, it was used as an example.

According to a 2020 article in Reprieve, Slovik's death sentence was unexpected by the military court's officers. However, while the Battle of the Bulge raged in Europe, then-supreme allied commander Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized the death as a warning to deserters about what might happen, according to Glass and Reprieve.

According to the Reprieve investigation, only 11 squad members had bullets in their guns when Slovik was put to death, giving them psychological deniability.

"They kept it a secret from everyone, not even informing his wife that he had been put to death. In the NPR interview, Glass stated, "They just said that he had died in Europe."

"It didn't become public knowledge until a journalist named William Bradford Huie investigated the case, wrote about it, and wrote a very good book about it in the mid-1950s," he stated.