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San Antonio Express-News (MCT)
Published: August 30, 2014
SAN ANTONIO — Nidal Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist condemned to death in the killings of 13 people at Fort Hood, has asked to become a citizen of the Islamic State.
Hasan, who said he was on jihad the day he opened up on soldiers in a crowded deployment center on the Texas post, wrote a letter to Fox News saying he wanted to join the terrorist organization that has been responsible for brutal executions, including the beheading of a journalist.
“I formally and humbly request to be made a citizen of the Islamic State,” the network said Hasan wrote in a document he penned to the Islamic State's chief, “Ameer, Mujahid Dr. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.”
“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.”
A former attorney, John Galligan, declined to read a copy of the letter he received from Hasan or give it to the San Antonio Express-News, but said Fox had accurately reported its contents, adding, “They haven't mischaracterized it.”
Hasan this weekend will mark the first anniversary of his arrival at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He came there Aug. 30, 2013, after being flown from Fort Hood, where a jury sentenced him to death for killing a pregnant soldier and 12 others, and wounding another 31.
A Disciplinary Barracks spokesman, George Marsec, said the military does not restrict mail privileges and doesn't censor correspondence.
Though he wore a thick, graying beard throughout last summer's trial while acting as his own lawyer, Hasan was forced to shave it after arriving on the military's death row. He is one of six servicemen at the Pentagon's only maximum-security prison awaiting execution.
©2014 the San Antonio Express-News. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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