FORT Hood killer Major Nidal Malik Hasan expressed political views that troubled his fellow soldiers, but may not have been reported for fear of them being accused of anti-Muslim feeling.
Investigators this weekend said they could find no link between military psychiatrist Hasan, who shot and killed 13 people on Thursday in a murderous rampage at one America's largest military bases, and extremist Islamic groups.
They said it was m
ost likely he acted alone.
But in the months leading up to shooting spree that also left 29 people wounded, Hasan raised eyebrows with comments that the war on terror was "a war on Islam" and wrestled with what to tell fellow Muslim solders who had their doubts about fighting in Islamic countries.
Hasan reportedly jumped on a desk and shouted "Allahu akbar!" – Arabic for "God is great!" – before Thursday's attack.
"The system is not doing what it's supposed to do," said Dr Val Finnell, who complained to administrators at a military university about what he considered Hasan's "anti-American" rants. "He at least should have been confronted about these beliefs, told to cease and desist, and to shape up or ship out."
Finnell studied with Hasan from 2007-8 in the master's programme in public health at the military's Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland, where Hasan persistently complained about perceived anti-Muslim sentiment in the military and injected his politics into courses where they had no place.
"In retrospect, I'm not surprised he did it," Finnell said of the shootings. "I had real questions about what his priorities were, what his beliefs were."
Hasan, who was shot by civilian police and taken into custody, was in intensive care but breathing on his own at a San Antonio army hospital yesterday.
In the days since Hasan fired more than 100 rounds in a soldier processing centre at Fort Hood in the worst mass shooting on a military facility in the US, a picture has emerged of a man who was forcefully opposed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was trying to elude his pending deployment to Afghanistan, and had struggled professionally in his work as an army psychiatrist.
"I told him, 'There's something wrong with you'," Osman Danquah, co-founder of the Islamic Community of Greater Killeen, said. "I didn't get the feeling he was talking for himself, but something just didn't seem right."
Danquah assumed the military's chain of command knew about Hasan's doubts, which had been known for more than a year to classmates at the Maryland graduate military medical programme. His fellow students complained to the faculty about Hasan's "anti-American propaganda" but said a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim student kept officers from filing a formal complaint.
The victims: Sgt Amy Krueger, 29
PFC Aaron Thomas Nemelka, 19
Michael Grant Cahill, 62
PFC Kham Xiong, 23
Staff Sgt Justin M DeCrow, 32
PFC Michael Pearson, 21
Russell Seager, 51
Francheska Velez, 21
Captain John Gaffaney, 56
Major L Eduardo Caraveo, 52
Major Nidal Malik Hasan
