FORT HOOD, Texas: The US soldier who admitted killing 13 fellow soldiers and wounding 31 in a shooting rampage at a Texas army base in 2009 told a mental health panel he wished to die while carrying out “jihad” because it would signal God had designated him as a religious martyr.
The New York Times yesterday published an account of parts of the panel’s January 2011 report on Major Nidal Hasan, a 42-year-old US-born Muslim whose court-martial began at Fort Hood, Texas on August 6. The newspaper also published an image online of the official report. Some pages of the report were released by Hasan’s former civilian lawyer, John Galligan, the newspaper said.
The panel, known as a sanity board, was assembled to assess whether former Army psychiatrist Hasan was able to stand trial.
It concluded he was fit for trial but the contents of the report have not been heard by the jury of military officers. Hasan told the court last week that he switched sides in what he called a US war on Islam.
He told the jury, “I am the shooter” and he has not contested the testimony of more than 60 witnesses who described the November 5, 2009 shootings, the worst non-combat attack on a US military base.
The court-martial resumed yesterday with expert witness testimony about the crime scene. Hasan attends court in a wheelchair after being paralysed from the waist down in a shootout with military police who ended his rampage.
Hasan could face the death penalty by lethal injection if he is convicted. “I’m paraplegic and could be in jail for the rest of my life,” Hasan told the panel of military mental health experts.
“However, if I died by lethal injection I would still be a martyr,” Hasan said.
He also denied having remorse and considered his injuries a “badge of honour,” according to the report. The terse, unapologetic statements help explain tension between Hasan, who is defending himself, and a team of standby lawyers assisting him who have sought to take a lesser role because they say Hasan is actively seeking the death penalty.
The standby lawyers say their code of ethics prevents them from assisting. Hasan has disputed the assertion he is seeking the death penalty for himself, and military judge Colonel Tara Osborn has denied the lawyers’ request to reduce their role.
Hasan was “encouraging or working toward the death penalty,” one of his lawyers, Lieutenant Colonel Kris Poppe, told Osborn during the court-martial.
The lead military prosecutor has said Hasan at the time of the attack wanted to avoid his impending deployment to Afghanistan and felt a religious duty to kill as many soldiers as possible. Reuters
