By MICHAEL GRACZYK and NOMAAN MERCHANT
FILE – This undated file photo provided by the Bell County Sheriff’s Department shows Maj. Nidal Hasan. The Army psychiatrist sentenced to death for the Fort Hood shooting rampage has been forcibly shaved according to a statement released by Fort Leavenworth on Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2013. Hasan began growing a beard in the years after the November 2009 shooting that left 13 dead and 30 wounded. The beard prompted delays to his court-martial because it violated Army grooming regulations. (AP Photo/Bell County Sheriff’s Department, File)
FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) — A military prosecutor says the Army psychiatrist who fatally shot 13 people at Fort Hood “will never be a martyr” and deserves to be executed.
Prosecutors asked jurors on Wednesday to hand down a rare military death sentence against Maj. Nidal Hasan.
Hasan was convicted last week for the 2009 attack that also wounded more than 30 people at the Texas military base.
Hasan, an American-born Muslim, has tried to justify the attack as an attempt to protect Taliban and Islamic leaders from U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Hasan wasn’t allowed to make those claims in court. But the lead prosecutor, Col. Mike Mulligan, addressed the claims on Wednesday.
Mulligan told jurors that a death sentence wouldn’t be Hasan’s gift to God, but rather “his debt to society.”
