Fort Hood Suspect Says He Was Defending Taliban Leaders
By MANNY FERNANDEZ
Published: June 4, 2013
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KILLEEN, Tex. — Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people, told a judge on Tuesday that he believed he was defending the lives of the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan from American military personnel when he went on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood here in November 2009.
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Major Hasan’s remarks were the first public explanation about the motive for one of the deadliest mass shootings at an American military base. His comments came a day after the judge granted his request to release his court-appointed military lawyers so that he could represent himself.
On Monday, one of Major Hasan’s first legal maneuvers had been to ask the judge, Col. Tara A. Osborn, for a three-month delay for the start of his trial, scheduled to begin on July 1. His primary reason in asking for the delay was to change his defense to “a defense of others,” but he had not elaborated on the identity of the “others.” At a new hearing on Tuesday, Colonel Osborn asked him pointedly whom he was defending.
“The leadership of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the Taliban,” he said, specifically naming Mullah Muhammad Omar, the founder of the Islamic insurgent group.
His comments, delivered in a soft, matter-of-fact tone, stunned many in the courtroom. Seated in the gallery behind him were Army soldiers, military police officers and relatives of some of his victims. Colonel Osborn then asked him to explain his defense, and Major Hasan asked for a recess to gather his thoughts.
When the hearing resumed a few minutes later, the judge again asked him to explain the facts supporting his defense, and he said he preferred to submit his thoughts in written form. “I don’t want to brainstorm in front of the court,” he told her.
But the judge pressed him further. She asked if he was defending one person or a group of people, and he said it was the group of leaders of the Taliban in Afghanistan, including Mullah Omar. The judge asked him to explain the connection between the Taliban leaders and the people whom he was accused of murdering and attempting to murder.
“They’re part of the United States military,” he said.
The judge delayed the start of jury selection, which had been set to begin on Wednesday, to give Major Hasan one day to find the legal authority to apply such a defense to his case. He was ordered to submit a brief to the judge by Wednesday morning, and Army prosecutors were asked to submit their own brief in response. She did not rule on whether to grant Major Hasan’s request for a delay, but instead set another hearing for Wednesday afternoon to further discuss the “defense of others” issue after the court papers are filed.
The defense of others, a common legal strategy used in criminal cases, requires a defendant to prove that he used force against an aggressor to protect a person or a group of people from being harmed or killed by that aggressor. In this case, Major Hasan is claiming that he was protecting Taliban leaders from death by using deadly force against Fort Hood military personnel deploying to Afghanistan.
Experts in military law called his theory ludicrous, and even Colonel Osborn seemed to question whether Major Hasan had any facts or evidence to support his defense. At one point, she said she was surprised that he could not explain the facts to support his defense after years of assisting his lawyers in his case. Military legal experts said the theory may have been the primary reason he has split from his Army defense team, because they believe his lawyers were aware that such a defense has no merit.
Major Hasan is accused of killing 13 people and wounding more than 30 others at the Fort Hood base on Nov. 5, 2009. He could face the death penalty if convicted.
His role in the attack has never been in dispute, and much of the courtroom activity at his pretrial hearings in recent months has centered on procedural matters. In the past, he had offered to plead guilty to the charges. Military law prohibits defendants charged in capital punishment cases from pleading guilty, and it was unlikely that Army prosecutors would drop their pursuit of the death penalty in order for him to plead guilty.
In the years leading up to the shooting, Major Hasan had grown more vocal about his opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nearly all of his victims were military personnel.
There has been no evidence to suggest that he had received any assistance from Taliban leaders in carrying out the attack. But Army prosecutors have said that following the attack, Major Hasan sought to align himself with Islamic extremists. They submitted as evidence the transcript of a telephone conversation he had with a representative of Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite broadcasting network. During the phone call, which took place in 2011 while Major Hasan was being held at the Bell County Jail in nearby Belton, Tex., prosecutors said he pledged allegiance to the Islamic fighters known as mujahedeen.
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