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Al-Qaeda Threatens to Kill American Captives If Fort Hood Killer Nidal Hasan Is Executed

Al-Qaeda has sent the United States a message about Nidal Hasan.

On Monday, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemen-based branch known as AQAP, warned that executing the Fort Hood jihadist shooter would mean death for any American the group gets its hands on. "The day America makes this decision," the statement said, "it will have made a decision to execute whoever among you falls captive to us."

The statement also praised Hasan. It praised the Omani pilot who tried to take over a Flydubai jet on September 30 and, according to investigators, meant to crash it into Israel's Ben Gurion Airport. Passengers and crew overpowered him, and the plane landed safely in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.

Before AQAP's official statement, an al-Qaeda supporter in Yemen had already suggested online that the execution could set off hijackings of American planes and attacks on U.S. troops.

Al-Qaeda released its threat on October 12, the 26th anniversary of the day the group blew a hole in the USS Cole.

AQAP has a long record of making good on threats like this one.

It was formed in 2009, when al-Qaeda merged its Saudi and Yemeni branches into one operation in Yemen. Seven weeks after Fort Hood, on Christmas Day 2009, AQAP sent a young Nigerian named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab onto Northwest Flight 253 to Detroit with explosives sewn into his underwear. The bomb failed, and passengers tackled him. In 2010, AQAP hid bombs inside printer cartridges and shipped them toward the United States on cargo planes. In 2015, it claimed the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris, where 12 people were murdered.

In December 2019, a Saudi Air Force trainee opened fire at Naval Air Station Pensacola, killing three American sailors and wounding eight others. AQAP claimed the attack. The FBI later found the gunman had been in contact with AQAP operatives for years.

The group has also held Americans captive. In December 2014, AQAP fighters murdered American photojournalist Luke Somers as U.S. special operators raided the compound in Yemen where he was being held.

So when AQAP threatens to kill "whoever among you falls captive to us," it has done it before.

Hasan was connected to this network before he ever fired a shot. He traded emails with Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric who became one of AQAP's top recruiters and propagandists. After the massacre, Awlaki called Hasan a hero. A U.S. drone strike killed Awlaki in Yemen in 2011.

On November 5, 2009, Hasan, then an Army major and psychiatrist, walked into the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood, Texas. The room was full of unarmed soldiers getting ready to deploy. He shouted "Allahu Akbar" and opened fire. Thirteen people were killed and 32 were wounded. One of the dead was a pregnant private.

Police shot and paralyzed him. In August 2013, a military jury convicted him on 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder, and sentenced him to death. He has sat on death row for 13 years.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recommended carrying out the sentence, and President Trump approved it. Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle set the execution for 1 p.m. on Thursday, December 3, at Fort Hood, the base where Hasan committed the massacre. Hegseth said it will be carried out by "soldiers with rifles" and livestreamed.

"People need to understand that there's serious consequences for these types of things," Hegseth said.

The last time the U.S. military executed one of its own was 1961, when Army Private John Bennett was hanged. The last military firing squad execution was in 1945.

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin answered the threat in advance on Sunday's Face the Nation. "I think people need to understand if you attack America, we will come after you," he said, "and we will make sure that the punishment fits the crime."

Al-Qaeda killed 2,977 people on September 11, 17 sailors on the USS Cole, and 224 people at two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998. Its Yemeni branch tried to blow up a plane over Detroit and killed three sailors in Florida. Now it is threatening to murder Americans because the United States intends to carry out a military court's sentence against a man who killed 13 people on a U.S. Army base.

The execution is still scheduled for 1 p.m. on December 3.

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