Nidal Malik Hasan, American soldier, psychiatrist, and mass murderer
Nidal Malik Hasan (born September 8, 1970) is a former United States Army major convicted of killing 13 people and injuring more than 30 others in the Fort Hood mass shooting on November 5, 2009. Hasan was an Army Medical Corps psychiatrist. He admitted to the shootings at his court-martial in August 2013. A jury panel of 13 officers convicted him of 13 counts of premeditated murder, 32 counts of attempted murder, and unanimously recommended he be dismissed from the service and sentenced to death. Hasan is incarcerated at the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas awaiting execution.
During the six years Hasan was a medical intern and resident at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, colleagues and superiors were concerned about his job performance and comments. Hasan was not married at the time, and was described as socially-isolated, stressed by his work with soldiers, and upset about their accounts of warfare. Two days before the shooting, less than a month before he was due to deploy to Afghanistan, Hasan gave away many of his belongings to a neighbor.Prior to the shooting, Hasan expressed critical views described by colleagues as "anti-American". An investigation conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) concluded his e-mails with the late Imam Anwar al-Awlaki were related to his authorized professional research and he was not a threat. The FBI, Department of Defense (DoD) and U.S. Senate all conducted investigations after the shootings. The DoD classified the events as "workplace violence", pending prosecution of Hasan in a court-martial. The Senate released a report describing the mass shooting as "the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil since September 11, 2001".The decision by the Army to not charge Hasan with terrorism is controversial.