Nidal Hasan believes it would be ‘an honor’ to join the caliphate in his letter to the leader of the ISIS terror group.
Hasan was an Army psychiatrist who went on a mass shooting spree nearly five years ago at Fort Hood. Hasan killed 13 people and injured 30 others on November 5, 2009. Nidal reportedly walked into the Fort Hood Soldier Readiness Processing Center and yelled, “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) before he began his violent shooting spree.
During the shootout with police that ensued afterward, Nidal was paralyzed from the waist down from bullets he caught in the back from the gunfire.
During his trial in which he represented himself, Hasan believed himself to be a “Mujahideen waging jihad against the United States” after he “switched sides” to follow the beliefs of radical Muslims. Radical Muslim groups, including members of al-Qaeda, praised Nidal Hasan’s actions and called him a “hero.”
Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaeda recruiter, believed that Nidal Hasan was a “man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people.”
Hasan’s shooting spree inside Fort Hood and the murder of 13 people was not deemed a terrorist attack. The federal government insisted that Hasan’s actions fit into the category of “workplace violence” instead and were prosecuted as such.
According to Daily Mail , Nidal was sentenced to death by lethal injection last year. Currently Hasan resides in the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
In an undated letter obtained by Fox News , Nidal Hasan wrote to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi asking that he become a “citizen” of the caliphate.
“I formally and humbly request to be made a citizen of the Islamic State,” Hasan wrote to the ISIS leader.
The handwritten letter consists of two pages and describes some of Hasan’s religious beliefs in turning to ISIS:
“It would be an honor for any believer to be an obedient citizen soldier to a people and its leader who don’t compromise the religion of All-Mighty Allah to get along with the disbelievers.”
The letter includes Nidal Hasan’s signature and the abbreviation “SoA” for Soldier of Allah.
John Galligan, Hasan’s lawyer, believed that the letter “underscores how much of his life, actions and mental thought process are driven by religious zeal.”
According to Examiner , Galligan also believed that Nidal Hasan wrote the letter to ISIS within the “last few weeks.”