07 November,2009 11:52 AM IST | | PTI
A US military psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people in a shooting rampage at a key defence base has been moved to a San Antonio medical facility, the army's only level one trauma centre, as investigators searched for the motive behind the horrific incident.
Thirty-nine-year-old Major Nidal Malik Hasan, an American citizen of Jordanian descent, was captured after he was shot four times by a woman police officer following his shooting spree at Fort Hood military base in San Antonio near here yesterday.
Media here said the Virginia-born Hasan was being deployed to Afghanistan, instead of Iraq as reported earlier. He has been moved to Brook Medical Army Centre in San Antonio and is in stable condition. Medical centre spokesman Dewey Mitchell could not provide details on the decision to transfer Hasan from an unnamed Central Texas hospital to the army's only level one trauma centre in the US.
Access to the Fort Hood base, the largest active duty military training post in US with 50,000 personnel and 150,000 family members and civilians, has been tightly controlled. Extra guards are now posted at entry gates to military housing developments to block media from entering the base stretches 340 square miles, with an escort.
Amazed and shocked, Army officials are picking up pieces after the tragedy that unfolded when Maj Hasan allegedly walked into a soldier readiness centre at the base killing people frantically in the worst attack against the military by one of its own men in which 12 soldiers and one Defence Department civilian were killed.
The biggest question before the officials is that "Did we miss the warning signs?" While the motive for the attack, which also left 30 people injured, remains unclear, reports suggest there were some signs that Hasan, who had signed up with the army after high school despite objections from his parents, was troubled.
Investigators examined Hasan's computer, his home and his garbage yesterday to learn what motivated the suspect, who lay in a coma, to unleash a hail of bullets on fellow soldiers. Hospital officials said some of the wounded had extremely serious injuries and might not survive.
One of the suspect's cousins said that after 9/11 attacks, Hasan, a devout Muslim, complained of feeling harassed by some service members for his religious background. He was reportedly a loner who socialised little with fellow officers. He also expressed strong views about the US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, and apparently did not want to be deployed to Afghanistan.
The FBI reportedly investigated whether he was behind the inflammatory comments left on a website under the handle NidalHasan. Hasan apparently got a bad performance review while working as counsellor at Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington. Yet the Army promoted him to Major anyway as it did with approximately 93 per cent of its captains last year.
