Hasan's former attorney releases enigmatic e-mails

Belton – Colonel John Galligan, the attorney formerly appointed to represent Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, released two e-mails that have been mentioned in both Hasan's case and that of Naser Jason Abdo.

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Col. Galligan is a retired judge of the Third Judicial Circuit of the Judge Advocate General Corps who served at Ft. Hood and now practices law in this city, chiefly defending soldiers accused of military crimes at Ft. Hood and elsewhere.

In these e-mails, both men have alleged war crimes by American forces as excuses for their offenses. Mr. Abdo was sentenced to two consecutive life terms and an additional 80 years in the federal penitentiary for his plot to bomb soldiers at Ft. Hood.

Hasan is slated to begin presentation of his defense today, Wednesday, August 21, in a General Court Martial entering its twelfth day after the government rested its capital murder case against him yesterday. He is charged with 13 specifications of premeditated murder and 32 specifications of premeditated attempted murder.

Abdo shouted his objections and his emulation of Maj. Hasan as federal marshals led him away in chains, his face muzzled with protective netting after he had attacked court officers repeatedly by spitting blood in their faces during the various evolutions of his trial.

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Hasan made mention of the same allegations when he made an inept attempt to cross examine a former supervisor from Darnall Army Community Hospital, and was called out of order because his questions exceeded the scope of the direct questioning by prosecutors.

Here are direct quotes from the e-mails, which were sent to superior officers at the Army's Medical Command on October 29, 2009 and November 2, just days before his deadly attack on fellow soldiers at Ft. Hood.

During a visit to a legal consultant's office, Hasan wrote, he asked about an incident in which a soldier reported “our troops pouring 50 gallons of fuel in the Iraqi water supply in retaliation for some adverse events that had occurred.”

He reported that his contact told him “that is a war crime,” and gave him numbers to call.

On Nov. 2, he said “I'm still not clear on the exact guidelines,” and went on to report a soldier telling him about a soldier from the lst Air Cavalry calling in an air evacuation for a badly wounded insurgent “where our medics then proceeded to kill the insurgent.”

“I would like to think it was some kind of mercy killing because of the severity of the insurgent's injuries,” Hasan wrote.

In another consultation with a troubled soldier, Hasan reported, “He describes intentionally killing a woman because she was at the wrong place at the wrong time. He reports he was ordered to kill anything that approached the specific site to include dogs, etc.”