The military trial of US army officer Nidal Hasan, charged with killing 13 people at an army post in Texas state, is set to begin on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Hasan does not deny that he carried out the November 2009 rampage at Fort Hood, one of the worst mass shootings in US history.<\/p>\n
He is charged with 13 specifications of premeditated murder and 32 specifications of attempted premeditated murder.<\/p>\n
Thirteen officers from around the country who hold Hasan’s rank or higher will serve on the jury for a trial that will likely last one month and probably longer.<\/p>\n
The former US army psychiatrist has twice dismissed his lawyers and now plans to represent himself at the trial.<\/p>\n
He has suggested he wanted to argue the killings were in “defence of others” – namely, members of the Taliban fighting Americans in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
The trial judge, Colonel Tara Osborn, has so far denied that strategy.<\/p>\n
Death penalty<\/p>\n
Witnesses say the attack occurred in a building where hundreds of unarmed soldiers, some about to deploy to Afghanistan, were waiting for vaccines and routine checkups.<\/p>\n
Hasan walked inside with two handguns, climbed onto a desk and shouted “Allahu Akbar!” – an Arabic phrase meaning “God is great!” Then he fired, pausing only to reload.<\/p>\n
More than 30 people were wounded in the shooting.<\/p>\n
Military law prohibits him from entering a guilty plea because authorities are seeking the death penalty.<\/p>\n
Although the Hasan case is unusually complex, experts say the military justice system is unaccustomed to dealing with death penalty cases and has struggled to avoid overturned sentences.<\/p>\n
No active-duty US soldier has been executed since 1961.<\/p>\n
If Hasan is convicted and sentenced to death there are likely years, if not decades, of appeals ahead.<\/p>\n
The Fort Hood shooting trial has been delayed over and over, often due to requests from Hasan.<\/p>\n
Source:Al Jazeera and Agencies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The military trial of US army officer Nidal Hasan, charged with killing 13 people at an army post in Texas state, is set to begin on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Hasan does not deny that he carried out the November 2009 rampage at Fort Hood, one of the worst mass shootings in US history.<\/p>\n
He is charged with 13 specifications of premeditated murder and 32 specifications of attempted premeditated murder.<\/p>\n
Thirteen officers from around the country who hold Hasan’s rank or higher will serve on the jury for a trial that will likely last one month and probably longer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":9543,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}