by wildcherry on Friday, November 6th, 2009 | News, World

Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, is a graduate of Virginia Tech and a psychiatrist licensed in Virginia. He previously worked at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. At Fort Hood, he is a known as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a psychiatrist practicing at Darnall Army Medical Center at Fort Hood.

A federal official said Hasan is a U.S. citizen of Jordanian descent. Military documents show Hasan was born in Virginia and has never deployed outside the United States.

“He was working for a furniture company and felt like he wasn’t going anywhere,” his mother was quoted as saying.

An owner of a 7-Eleven at Fort Hood said Hasan — whom he knows as “Major Nidal” — came in for coffee and hash browns most mornings, including the morning of the shootings. Surveillance video from the store obtained by CNN shows a man who according to the store owner is Hasan at the cashier’s counter at about 6:20 a.m. Thursday, about seven hours before the mass shooting. He was carrying a beverage and dressed in traditional Arab garb. Another surveillance video from Tuesday showed the man in scrubs.

“He looked normal,” the owner said. “Came in had his hash browns and coffee as you see in the surveillance video.”

The owner said he was too busy to chat with Hasan on Thursday, but through brief talks learned the officer’s background was Jordanian, though he didn’t speak Arabic well. He said Hasan didn’t wear a wedding ring and jokingly asked several times whether the owner knew a bride for him.
Hasan would also ask the owner whether he planned to attend Friday prayers. The owner would say he was too busy.

Hasan was reported to have been wearing his uniform when he opened fire, said Col. Steven Braverman, hospital commander at Fort Hood. Braverman said Hasan had received orders to deploy to Afghanistan.

Below is a Fox news interview of Malik Hasan’s Cousin:

Hasan’s cousin related that he had “been making requests since sometime after September 11th” not to be deployed to Iraq, and that Hasan had been trying to leave the military:

He was dealing with harassment from some of his colleagues to the extent where he hired a military attorney to have the issue resolved, pay back the government to get out of the military if that was it, but he was at the end of trying everything to make everybody fair and reasonable and him get out the situation, so I’m really shocked and baffled and if anybody wants to try to suggest that it has something else to do with being afraid of wanting to go to war, that’s it.

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