Fears of anti-Muslim backlash after Fort Hood massacre

by Paul Woodward on November 8, 2009

Fears of anti-Muslim backlash after Fort Hood massacre
By Paul Woodward, The National, November 8, 2009

The shooting rampage by a US army psychiatrist, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, at Fort Hood in Texas, came almost six months after the Camp Liberty killings in Iraq where an American army sergeant killed five fellow soldiers at a combat stress centre.

Maj Hasan, one of only 408 psychiatrists serving 553,000 active-duty US troops around the world, was likely to have worked in such a centre when sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. Among the 13 killed on Thursday at the Fort Hood Readiness Centre, a soldier’s last stop before deployment, five were fellow therapists, the army said. [continued...]

Little evidence of terror plot in base killings
By David Johnston and Eric Schmitt, New York Times, November 8, 2009

After two days of inquiry into the mass shooting at Fort Hood, investigators have tentatively concluded that it was not part of a terrorist plot.

Rather, they have come to believe that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused in the shootings, acted out under a welter of emotional, ideological and religious pressures, according to interviews with federal officials who have been briefed on the inquiry.

Investigators have not ruled out the possibility that Major Hasan believed he was carrying out an extremist’s suicide mission. [continued...]

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