Fort Hood shooter sentenced to death

A military jury sentenced Maj. Nidal Hasan to death Wednesday for killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas in 2009. Hasan has said the attack on unarmed soldiers was motivated by a desire to protect Muslim insurgents fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A jury of senior military officers found the Army psychiatrist guilty of the killings and wounding more than 30 others in a military court Friday.

The jury -- nine colonels, three lieutenant colonels and one major -- reached a guilty verdict in roughly seven hours, convicting Maj. Nidal Hasan of all 13 charges of premeditated murder and all 32 charges of attempted premeditated murder for the November 2009 shooting spree against unarmed soldiers at Fort Hood.

Hasan sought the death penalty at his murder trial, but the closest he will likely get to the execution chamber is the barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where five other soldiers on death row wait out their sentences.

The U.S. military hasn't executed anyone since 1961 and is unlikely to break that trend for an officer who called for his own death and throughout the court proceedings failed to put up any kind of defense that would mitigate that.

Al Jazeera and the Associated Press