Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people and injured 30 more in his 2009 rampage, recently wrote a letter from prison to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi asking to become a citizen of the caliphate.
"I formally and humbly request to be made a citizen of the Islamic State," he wrote in a two-page, handwritten letter given to his lawyer and
obtained by Fox News.
"It would be an honor for any believer to be an obedient citizen soldier to a people and its leader who don't compromise the religion of All-Mighty Allah to get along with the disbelievers."
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John Galligan, Hasan's lawyer, said the letter "underscores how much of his life, actions, and mental thought process are driven by religious zeal. And it also reinforces my belief that the military judge committed reversible error by prohibiting Major Hasan from both testifying and arguing . . . how his religious beliefs" motivated the shooting.
Hasan, 43, was sentenced to death by a military court for the November 5, 2009, shooting after offering no defense for his actions. At the time, the Defense Department called the incident "workplace violence," and many said Hasan didn't want to deploy to Afghanistan because he would have been fighting other Muslims.
Since then, it has become clear that a number of American citizens have sought to join jihadists in the Middle East.
Douglas McArthur McCain, who most recently lived in San Diego, and Abdirahmaan Muhumed, of Minneapolis, reportedly died fighting for ISIS in Syria this month. Details about their backgrounds continue to be investigated this week after their deaths were confirmed.
ABC News reported that Hasan was himself a Muslim-American raised in Virginia by Palestinian-immigrant parents. He described himself as a "mujahedeen," a Muslim holy warrior, in 2009, and his most recent letter to ISIS was signed SoA, which means "Soldier of Allah."
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