By Jim Forsyth
San Antonio - A military psychiatrist charged with last year's shooting rampage at Fort Hood Army Base attended a court appearance on Tuesday in a wheelchair, his first public appearance since the incident.
Dressed in an Army uniform, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, who was paralysed by wounds sustained during the attack, rolled himself into a Fort Hood courtroom where a military judge delayed an evidentiary hearing until October 4.
Hasan, 39, who had exchanged emails with an anti-American Muslim figure sympathetic to al-Qaeda, is charged with killing 13 people. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.
A Muslim born in the United States of immigrant parents, Hasan is charged in the November 5 rampage at the Texas base, which is the world's biggest military facility.
At Tuesday's brief hearing, Colonel James Pohl, the hearing officer, asked Hasan a series of questions about whether he understood charges against him and his rights. Each time Hasan replied in a clear voice: "Yes, sir."
Pohl agreed to postpone an until October 4 an Article 32 hearing, the military equivalent to a grand jury hearing where the evidence against Hasan would be weighed to determine if a trial is warranted.
Hasan was treated at an army hospital and later held in jail. - Reuters