Justice Delayed, Martyrdom Defrayed
The military jury comprised of army combat veterans and senior U.S. officers deliberated just over two hours to come to their agreement that Maj. Nidal Hasan merited the death penalty for his gruesome attack in Fort Hood, Texas in 2009 on fellow soldiers. They unarmed, appearing at the military station where they would be receiving their last shots and orders before embarking on their mission to Afghanistan, and he, determined to lethally detain them, very well armed."Do not be fooled. He is not giving his life. We are taking his life. This is not his gift to God. This is his debt to society. He is a criminal. He is a cold-blooded murderer."
U.S. Col. Michael Mulligan
He was sentenced to death by lethal injection for the murder of thirteen soldiers on November 5, 2009. He was found guilty of 45 counts of murder and attempted murder in the Islamist rampage where he lived out his fantasy of murderous jihad. Wearing green fatigues and carrying a laser-sighted semi-automatic pistol that he had practised his proficiency with leading up the atrocity, he fired 146 rounds at men and women desperate to escape the mayhem.
FILE - This undated file photo provided by the Bell County
Sheriff's Department shows Maj. Nidal Hasan. Hasan has been convicted of
murder for the 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood that killed 13 people
and wounded more than 30 others. Hasan and many of his victims seem to
want the same thing - his death. But while survivors and relatives of
the dead view lethal injection as justice, the Army psychiatrist appears
to see it as something else - martyrdom. (AP Photo/Bell County
Sheriff's Department.)
He and he alone decided that 42 years of age would be the right time to present himself as a martyr. His martyrdom could have been achieved four years earlier, had he been shot to death, as he preferred. Even yet, though, he may not achieve his dream of personal sacrifice to honour Islam. The American military justice system errs on the side of humanity and justice, requiring an appeal process. He may yet wait years to achieve the status he yearns for.
As for the families and friends of his victims and those whose lives he altered forever through vicious injury done them, their wish to see him dead will simply be set temporarily aside. They may perhaps take comfort in the fact that his own wishes have been foiled. He has no wish to remain imprisoned, his health and welfare as a quadriplegic murderer the focus of a system beyond his control.
His defence was his intense desire to protect the Afghan Taliban from assaults that could be mounted against them by the forces of the country he was himself born into. Where he was raised, educated, trained and became a part of the society. He was not forcibly inducted into the military; he joined it of his own volition and was exposed to the profession he would make his own as a U.S. army psychiatrist.
That old adage of a physician needing to paid heed to the requirement to heal himself before setting out to heal others surely stemmed from some other, previous, perhaps ancient event of similar disturbing cataclysmic effect that the human mind is so capable of succumbing to, and in the process inflicting horrendous pain upon others.
"The defence rests" complacently, awaiting salvation.
Labels: Atrocities, Conflict, Crime, Islamism, Justice, United States
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, August 29, 2013
<< Home