Day after day he listened to the horror stories of American soldiers returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His worst nightmare was that one day it would be his turn to be sent there.
And when Major Nidal Malik Hasan (39), a psychiatrist at the Fort Hood army base in Texas, learnt he would be posted to Afghanistan at the end of this month he snapped.
What followed was like a scene from a horror movie. On 5 November Hasan smuggled two handguns onto the base and positioned himself at a table where hundreds of unarmed soldiers who were being deployed or had just returned were lining up for medical examinations. He bowed his head for a few seconds, whipped out his weapons, screamed “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) and opened fire.
Ten minutes later 12 soldiers and one civilian lay dead. Another 30 people were wounded.
A policewoman who happened to be nearby fired four shots at Hasan, who’s now under guard in a military hospital in San Antonio.
The shooting sent shockwaves throughout the world and raised many questions. How could someone with such strong anti-American feelings, who’d already tried to make contact with Al Qaeda, have held the position he did?
Six months ago Hasan asked a lawyer to get him out of the army, his cousin, Mohammed Hasan (24), says. It didn’t help that his colleagues discriminated against him, Hasan says. “He was being treated like a Muslim, like an Arab, rather than an American. But this wasn’t enough to make him do what he did.”
The policewoman who shot Hasan, Sergeant Kimberly Munley (34), is now being hailed as a heroine who prevented a much higher death toll.
Friends and neighbours describe her as honest and friendly; someone who’s fearless. She once single-handedly apprehended a robber in her neighbourhood.
“She’s absolutely a hero,” Chuck Madley, director of emergency services on the Fort Hood base, says of the mom of two daughters.
Hasan is the son of a Palestinian family who immigrated to America from Israel. He joined the defence force against his parents’ wishes because he felt it his duty as an American citizen.
A witness, Marquest Smith, still can’t believe Hasan turned on his fellow soldiers. “He was in uniform,” he says, dumbfounded. “He was supposed to be in the fight with us, not against us.”
