Hearing to start Tuesday in Army slayings

October 11, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON

Alma Nemelka said her nephew was the first to die. He was standing at the rear of the Soldiers Readiness Center at Fort Hood, Texas, when an army officer burst in shouting, “Allahu Akbar!” Pfc. Aaron Thomas Nemelka, 19 and soon to be deployed to the Middle East, was shot in the head.

On Tuesday, the man accused of killing Nemelka and 12 others, Maj. Nidal Hasan of the Army Medical Corps, will appear for his first broad military hearing into the November 2009 attacks.

Hasan, a psychiatrist and a U.S.-born Muslim, was shot during the attack and is paralyzed from the waist down.

The hearing, called an Article 32 proceeding, is expected to last four to six weeks. Similar to a grand jury hearing but open to the public, it is designed to help the top army commander at Fort Hood determine whether there is enough evidence to court-martial Hasan.

Nearly a year after the shootings, fundamental questions linger. Was Hasan another “workplace” violent offender? Was he a radicalized extremist who should have been removed from the military?

Was he a tool of radical Islamic leaders abroad who reportedly were in contact with him and spurred him on, and who immediately applauded the shootings?

In Washington, the Senate Homeland Security Committee is close to finishing its investigation into failures in the military and federal law enforcement that allowed Hasan to slip through the system.

After initially issuing subpoenas for information, the committee has held hours of private briefings with military investigators and FBI agents to piece together Hasan’s military career and examine what the Army and law enforcement knew, or should have known, about his intentions.

Their findings, targeted for release in the midst of the Fort Hood legal hearing, are expected to call for major changes in how the Department of Defense polices its own.

“Our investigation into whether our government could have done anything to prevent the Fort Hood murders, based on what was known about Hasan, has been difficult but it is coming to an end,” said Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), the committee chairman. The final report, he said, “will reveal new information.”