What Should You Know About Fort Hood Killer Nidal Malik Hasan?

Professor Hasan A. Yahya

To the lay reader, here are some information collected from several sources about Major Nidal Malik Hasan, He’s 39 years old, American Arab of Palestinian-Jordanian origin. Born in  West Bank town of al-Bireh, the town of Muslims, as compared to Ramallah, with more Christian population.A devout Muslim.

His victims: 12 fellow soldiers, five medical staff like himself, and over 30 injured.

Time: Last Thursday 1.00 to 1.30 pm. [Noon prayer time]

His job in the Army, Hasan was working with patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from U.S. combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Associates and relatives have said he was disturbed that U.S. Muslim soldiers could fight against fellow Muslims in those countries.

The communications, which were intercepted by the FBI, consisted primarily of Hasan posing questions to the imam as a spiritual leader or adviser, and their content was “consistent with the subject matter of (Hasan’s) research,” a law enforcement official said.

1. Hasan still in serious condition, but surviving. He was shot by a policewoman who rushed to the location, after receiving 911 call. He was involved in doing research for the center, and that work connected under FBI knowledge for benefits of army personnel in combat zones, and terrorist behavior. In addition to the above, here is a summary of the information about the killing spree. 
2. The FBI investigated at the time and concluded that Hasan was not a threat.
3. And investigators say now that there is no evidence Hasan received help or orders to carry out the Fort Hood attack.
4. But the man to whom Hasan turned for advice has for years preached in sermons circulated on the Web that the United States was engaged in a war against Islam and urged Muslims to fight it.
5. To many, the shocking story previously of a soldier killing five of his comrades does not come as a surprise considering that the military has, for years now, been sending troops with untreated PTSD back into the U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
6. According to an Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center analysis, reported in the Denver Post in August 2008, more than "43,000 service members - two-thirds of them in the Army or Army Reserve - were classified as non-deployable for medical reasons three months before they deployed to Iraq.
7. But he turned into an angry critic of the wars America was waging in Iraq and Afghanistan and had tried in vain to negotiate his discharge.
8. He counselled soldiers returning from the front line and told relatives that he was horrified at the prospect of a deployment to Afghanistan later this year – his first time in a combat zone.
9. Whether due to his personal convictions, his stress over his deployment or other reasons, Hasan is alleged to have snapped and gone on a murderous rampage with a powerful semi-automatic handgun after shouting "Allahu Akhbar" ("God is great"), according to survivors. He had earlier given away copies of the Koran to neighbours.
10. Investigators at this stage have no indication that he planned the attacks with anyone else. But they are trawling through his phone records, paperwork and computers he used before the attack during an apparently sleepless night.
11. 10.  Five of the 13 victims were fellow mental health professionals from three units of the army's Combat Stress Control Detachment, it was disclosed yesterday.
12. 11.  The shootings have set off nationwide soul-searching and worries about the motives of the Fort Hood gunman.
13. 12.  In a television interview on the eve of his visit to the base, Obama said the question being asked was: “  ’Is this an individual who’s acting in this way or is it some larger set of actors?”Senator Joseph Lieberman, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said he would launch a probe into whether the army missed any warning signs which could have prevented the attack.
14. The Washington Post reported that Hasan warned a roomful of senior army physicians a year and a half ago that to avoid “adverse events” the military should allow Muslim soldiers to be released from duty as conscientious objectors.
    “It’s getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims,” he was quoted as saying in the investigation.
15. It is understood that Hasan had been due to be deployed with members of those units in coming months. Whether he deliberately singled out other combat stress counsellors is another key question. What does seem clear is that the army missed an increasing number of red flags that Hasan was a troubled and brooding individual within its ranks.
16. His friends argued with Hasan when he said that he felt the "war on terror" was really a war against Islam, expressed anti-Jewish sentiments and defended suicide bombings.
17. Relatives said that the death of Hasan's parents, in 1998 and 2001,[Why they were killed, when and where, we don’t know ] turned him more devout. After he lost his parents he tried to replace their love by reading a lot of books, including the Koran, He didn't have a girlfriend, he didn't dance, he didn't go to bars." [In other words he was a devout good Muslim.
18. He was sufficiently troubled that one of his friends recommended the centre reject Hasan's request to become a lay Muslim leader at Fort Hood.
19. Hasan had, in fact, already come to the attention of the authorities before Thursday's massacre. He was suspected of being the author of internet postings that compared suicide bombers with soldiers who throw themselves on grenades to save others and had also reportedly been warned about proselytising to patients.

20.  The FBI investigated at the time and concluded that Hasan was not a threat. And investigators say now that there is no evidence Hasan received help or orders to carry out the Fort Hood attack.

21.  But the man to whom Hasan turned for advice has for years preached in sermons circulated on the Web that the United States was engaged in a war against Islam and urged Muslims to fight it.

22.  At Fort Hood, he told a colleague, Col Terry Lee, that he believed Muslims should rise up against American "aggressors". He made no attempt to hide his desire to end his military service early or his mortification at the prospect of deployment to Afghanistan. "He had people telling him on a daily basis the horrors they saw over there," said his cousin, Nader Hasan.

23.  The FBI said Major Nidal Hasan, a military psychiatrist, came to its attention in 2008 after he communicated with the target of an FBI-led counter-terror investigation.

Hasan has emerged from a coma after being wounded in the Fort Hood shootings last Thursday in which 13 people (12 fellow soldiers) were killed and 42 wounded.

24.  The FBI said investigators assessed that the Hasan’s communications with the suspect were “consistent with research being conducted by Major Hasan in his position as a psychiatrist at the Walter Reed Medical Center.

25.  He failed search for a wife seemed to haunt Hasan. At the Muslim Community Centre in the Washington suburb of Silver Spring, he signed up for an Islamic matchmaking service, specifying that he wanted a bride who wore the hijab and prayed five times a day.

26.  There should be something big happened to him in Texas. In the previous three or four weeks, something huge because revenge is not in human nature. Circumstances create revenge for certain reasons.

27.  Relatives said that he was subjected to increasingly ugly taunts about his religion and ethnicity from other soldiers after the September 11 attacks. But his uncle insisted yesterday that Hasan would not have been driven to mass murder by revenge or religion.

28.  As a Palestinian, Israel continues to be guilty of committing systematic war crimes across Gaza and the West Bank, while US, supported, funded and armed Israel during the wars on Lebanon 2006, and Gaza 2008, which help in part those crimes against Palestinians. Which may enraged Hasan.

29.  Some writers think that Goldstone report and the congress resolution 867 has something to do with the incident. Where continuous and systematic abuse, outrages on personal dignity, humiliating and degrading treatment are contrary to fundamental principles of international humanitarian and human rights law". As the reports says. Such acts are grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and constitute a war crime," the report says.

30.  Some ignorant Muslim clerics named him as hero, which is unwarranted absurd conclusion.

31.  Finally, many of the characteristics attributed to Hasan by acquaintances – withdrawn, unassuming, brooding, socially awkward and never known to have had a girlfriend – have applied to other mass murderers as well.  (1475 words) www.hasanyahya.com