FORT HOOD, United States: Survivors of the Fort Hood massacre face being questioned this week by the US Army psychiatrist accused of committing the attack, the deadliest such incident on an American military base.
Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who has previously admitted killing 13 people and wounding dozens more at the Texas facility in 2009, goes on trial today. Having sacked his lawyers, he will represent himself.
Kimberly Munley, a former Fort Hood police officer wounded in the shooting, which shocked the military and sparked calls for greater protection from “homegrown” terror, said she was dreading the prospect of being cross-examined.
“I really don’t have a good feeling about it,” she said. “I think he is doing this on purpose to continue to taunt and victimise us.”
Hasan, the 42-year-old US-born son of Palestinian parents, was preparing to deploy to Afghanistan prior to the attack, and he has said he attacked fellow soldiers to protect his fellow Muslims from an “illegal” war.
The government’s lead witness said he would not lash out at Hasan despite feelings of rage about a man who is accused of shooting him five times.
“I will conduct myself with dignity and hold myself in military bearing,” Alonzo Lunsford, a retired staff sergeant blinded in one eye by the shooting said.
“I will let him know that he cannot push me. I bend, I do not break. I was wounded, but I am a man.”
Military judge Colonel Tara Osborn has insisted that the long-awaited trial focuses on the facts of the shooting. She has barred prosecutors from mentioning terrorism as a motive and prohibited Hasan from using a “defence of others” strategy to justify his actions.
However, Hasan’s former civilian defence lawyer John Galligan said Osborn was wrong to rule that the defence of others strategy has no legal merit.
“Without the ability to put on his defence, the judge has created a kangaroo court,” Galligan said in an interview. “She’s just protecting the government as far as I’m concerned. I still believe (Hasan) has been rendered nothing more than a prop in court.”
The ruling largely ended Hasan’s ability to use the trial to espouse his extremist views, but legal experts believe he will still attempt to do so.
“He is an ideologue,” said Jeffrey Addicott, a former army prosecutor and a terrorism law expert at St Mary’s University School of Law. “It is a live setting, and he is going to blurt out at some point Islamic extremist rhetoric.” AFP
