Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan admits pulling out a pistol, shouting "Allahu akbar" (God is great) and opening fire on unarmed people, killing 13 of them. All, he says, in an effort to stop them from going to Afghanistan and killing his fellow Muslims.
Concluding he was on the "wrong side" in America's war, he told jurors at his court-martial that he switched sides.
So, victims and others are demanding, why is the November 2009 attack at Fort Hood being tried as a case of workplace violence and not as an act of terror?
Military law expert Scott L. Silliman says the answer is simple. Because the Uniform Code of Military Justice does not have a punitive article for "terrorism."
"They really didn't have an option," says Silliman, director emeritus of Duke University's Center on Law, Ethics and National Security in Durham, N.C. "He was an active-duty officer. The crime occurred on a military installation. ... It was obvious he was going to face a court-martial."
Victims of the shooting rampage filed a lawsuit last year over the administration's decision to treat the incident as workplace violence. They say that designation has robbed them of benefits and made them ineligible to receive the Purple Heart, awarded to service members wounded in battle.
On Monday, the staff of the magazine National Review launched a petition drive directed at Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, arguing that the Army psychiatrist should be tried as an enemy combatant for what they consider "an Act of Terror."
"By not designating this event as such an act, it disrespects the lives of the 13 who lost their lives that day, and dozens more who were injured," the petition reads. "This is outrageous and I call on you to change the official designation now" before proceedings against Hasan go further.
While Silliman understands the outrage, he says transferring the case to civil courts - where a terror charge could attach - was just not possible.
"It would have been totally unprecedented to have that sort of thing occur," says Silliman, who has served as senior attorney at two large military installations and three major Air Force commands. "Now, if the crime had occurred off the post, then there might have been what we call concurrent jurisdiction between the civilian authorities and the military authorities."
Why can't the administration call this an act of terror without charging Hasan as a terrorist? According to a widely quoted Pentagon position paper opposing Purple Hearts for the victims that would allow the defense to argue that Hasan "cannot receive a fair trial because a branch of government has indirectly declared that Major Hasan is a terrorist - that he is criminally culpable."
Reed Rubinstein, one of the attorneys representing a number of the shooting victims and their families, calls that argument "disingenuous."
The National Counterterrorism Center and State Department both counted the incident among terror attacks that year, he notes. The White House and Department of Defense have balked, he argues, because too many people didn't heed warning signs that Hasan was becoming increasingly radical leading up to his deployment to Afghanistan.
