Fort Hood Gunman Waits To See If Military Trial Will Proceed
Oct 13, 2010 2 Comments ›› Pat Dollard
lWashington Post:
FORT HOOD, TEX. – Nearly a year ago, Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was getting ready to deploy to Afghanistan, where his mission was to help fellow soldiers cope with the traumas of battle.
Now he is back at this massive post as a defendant, paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. Scores of those same soldiers are expected to testify at a military court hearing this week that Hasan was the gunman who stood up at a paperwork processing center, shouted “Allahu Akbar” and then opened fire, killing 13 and injuring 32.
The worst massacre at a military installation ended in minutes, when two civilian police officers wounded the assailant. But the judicial process has stretched on for months.
On Wednesday, a military judge is expected to rule on a request by Hasan’s defense team for yet another continuance of his Article 32 hearing, a procedure to find whether there is enough evidence to proceed with a court-martial.
Hasan, 40, appeared pale and thin as a police officer rolled him into the courtroom Tuesday amid heavy security. He has spent much of the past year in a special cell at the county lockup.
He wore a fleece cap and his Army uniform of camouflage fatigues – he retains his salary while his case is pending – and listened impassively as attorneys debated procedural rules. A few family members of those shot in the rampage sat in the courtroom on Tuesday; one clutched a plastic bag with a black-and-white photo of a soldier, one of those struck in the fusillade of bullets.
Hasan’s lead attorney, John P. Galligan, is a retired Army colonel who was the chief circuit judge at Fort Hood. He has said he is committed to sparing his client the death penalty and has hinted that he might argue an insanity defense for Hasan. He consistently has argued for a change of venue for the hearing, saying Hasan cannot get a fair trial at Fort Hood.
A Muslim born in Virginia – to parents who had immigrated to Jordan from a Palestinian town near Jerusalem, and later from Jordan to the United States – Hasan joined the Army after graduating from Virginia Tech in the mid-1990s with a biology degree. After medical school, he began a residency at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Northwest Washington.
Hasan became more religiously observant in recent years, after the death of his parents, acquaintances have said. He began corresponding via e-mail with an imam, Anwar al-Aulaqi, who has been linked to al-Qaeda attacks against the United States.
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Hasan’s e-mail correspondence with Aulaqi came to the attention of one of the nation’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces but never was passed on to the military, according to a review requested by the Pentagon.
Aulaqi praised the Fort Hood shootings.
