Killer Medics On Death Row

Episode Synopsis

November 5th 2009. Fort Hood, Texas: the most populous US military base in the world. Here soldiers assemble for final medical exams before deployment overseas. As they wait in line, a uniformed man stands, draws a handgun and begins shooting. He kills 13 and injures 32. The massacre is halted when a civilian police officer shoots and wounds the gunman. He's identified as Army psychiatrist, Major Nidal Hasan. Investigators charge him with murder and scour his background for his motives. Hasan is the son of Palestinian immigrants. He joins the Army and trains to be a doctor. After the 9/11 attacks he's bullied by his colleagues and becomes insular. He becomes an Army Psychiatric intern, but is considered to be a loner and speaks out against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2009, his world is turned upside down when he's told he must deploy to a war zone. Soon after his transfer to Fort Hood, he buys a powerful handgun and forbids anyone from entering his apartment. The day before the shooting, he gives away many of his belongings to his neighbours and urges them to read the Qu'ran. He then travels to Fort Hood? and unleashes mayhem. Hasan's trial reveals he was in contact with a radical Muslim cleric and that he openly praised a terror attack on US soil. The military court weighs up the evidence and sentences Hasan to death. But question remain. Was Nidal Hasan a crazed lone gunman... or was he a jihadist?