The firing-squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan is now set for December 3 at Fort Hood, the same Central Texas post where he killed 13 people in 2009.
Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle announced Tuesday night that the execution will take place at 1 p.m. Central time. CNN reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recommended death by firing squad and President Donald Trump approved it. Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said Monday that judgment day for Hasan had come. Hegseth replied to that post with one word: “Justice.”
Hasan, then an Army major and psychiatrist, opened fire Nov. 5, 2009, inside a medical processing building where soldiers were preparing for deployment. He killed 13 people and wounded 32 others. Witnesses said he shouted “Allahu akbar” during the attack. A panel of 13 officers convicted him in July 2013 of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder and unanimously recommended death.
The execution of Nidal Hasan by firing squad will take place at Fort Hood, Texas on Thursday, December 3rd, 2026, at 1 p.m. CT. https://t.co/re7BpqkSN4
— Acting Secretary of the Army (@SecArmy) October 7, 2026
This would be the first U.S. military execution since 1961, and the Army’s first firing-squad execution of a service member since World War II. The military has had the death penalty on the books, but it has not carried one out in 65 years.
Trump’s approval starts a series of procedural steps. Those steps are not automatic. An article in the Army Lawyer magazine said Hasan could still ask a civilian federal court to review his detention, and that kind of challenge can pause an execution for years. Telle’s announcement sets the date. It does not say those appeals have been exhausted.
Fort Hood, now also referred to in some official uses as Fort Cavazos, is in Bell County, outside Killeen. The 2009 shooting remains one of the deadliest attacks on a U.S. military installation. Families of the dead and wounded have waited nearly 17 years for a sentence to be carried out.
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