Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
US President Donald Trump has approved the execution by firing squad of Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan for the 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, in which 13 people were killed and more than 30 were injured. The US military has not carried out the death penalty since 1961.
The Army secretary will decide the time and place of the execution, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a post on X. “Judgement day for Hasan has finally come,” Parnell wrote.
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Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, entered a medical building where soldiers were undergoing medical check-ups, shouted “Allahu akbar” — Arabic for “God is great!” — and opened fire with a laser-sighted handgun. He said he was trying to stop them from going to Afghanistan and killing his fellow Muslims. At his trial, he made almost no effort to defend himself, told jurors that the evidence would show he was the shooter, and described himself as a soldier who had “switched sides”.
Trump’s approval sets in motion a series of procedural steps towards the execution, but Hasan could delay the process, potentially for years, by filing a habeas corpus appeal in the civilian federal court system, according to an article published in May in the magazine Army Lawyer.
Death sentences are extremely rare in the military justice system, and executions are even rarer. Hasan is one of four men on the military’s death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. President George W. Bush approved the execution of Army Specialist Ronald Gray in 2008, but it was put on hold by a judge and he remains at Leavenworth. The last person executed in the military system was Private John Bennett, who was hanged in 1961 for raping an 11-year-old girl.
Trump approved Hasan’s execution days after a failed attempt to execute Christa Pike by lethal injection led Tennessee’s governor to halt further executions this year and order an independent review. Trump resumed the federal death penalty after an informal moratorium under previous administrations. The federal government executed 13 people between 2020 and early 2021, making Trump the most prolific execution president in more than 130 years. Asked if the failed execution in Tennessee would lead him to seek changes to capital punishment, Trump said it was “an interesting situation” and added, “It shouldn’t be very difficult,” referring to carrying out lethal injections.
The approval marks a significant step in Hasan’s case, though further legal action could still delay the execution, while also drawing attention to the rare use of the death penalty in the US military system.
With PTI Inputs
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SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
