Court martial recommended for Fort Hood shooting suspect

HOUSTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Army official has recommended that the Army major charged in the 2009 shooting rampage at a Texas Army base face a court martial and possible death penalty charges, the Army said on Friday.

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a 40-year-old Army psychiatrist who U.S. officials linked to a radical Muslim cleric in Yemen, is charged in a shooting spree at Fort Hood that killed 13 people and wounded 32 others on November 5, 2009.

Colonel Morgan Lamb, a Fort Hood brigade commander, forwarded his non-binding recommendation to Lieutenant General Robert Cone, the Fort Hood commander who will have the final word on setting a possible court martial.

"We can confirm that Lamb did recommend that the charges pending against Hasan be sent to a general court-marital authorized to consider capital punishment," the Fort Hood public affairs office said in a statement.

The statement did not set a deadline for Cone to act. Retired Colonel John Galligan, Hasan's attorney, could not be reached to comment.

Hasan did not speak during evidentiary hearings held at Fort Hood in October 2010. Instead, he silently watched the proceedings from his wheelchair. He was paralyzed from the chest down by bullet wounds inflicted by civilian police officers during the shooting.

In the rampage at the world's largest military facility, victims recalled hearing Hasan, who is Muslim, shout "Allahu Akbar" -- Arabic for "God is Greatest" -- just before opening fire on a group of soldiers undergoing health checks before being deployed to war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The incident has raised concerns over the threat of "home-grown" militant attacks. U.S. officials said Hasan had exchanged e-mails with Anwar al-Awlaki, an anti-American al Qaeda figure based in Yemen.

Fort Hood is a major deployment point for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

(Editing by Jackie Frank)