No pity for Fort Hood dead, says killer’s friend

18-year-old ‘mentored’ by Nidal Malik Hasan refuses to condemn the shooting spree

LAST UPDATED 5:59 AM, NOVEMBER 10, 2009

Questions were being asked in Texas this weekend about the friendship between the US Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 people in a shooting spree at the Fort Hood military base last Thursday, and a young man called Duane Reasoner Jnr. Interviewed by the BBC on Friday, Reasoner said he felt no pity for Hasan's victims because "they were troops who were going to Afghanistan and Iraq to kill Muslims".

A tape of the interview, conducted by Gavin Lee of the BBC, has ended up on YouTube and other sites and is getting an angry response from Americans still shocked by Hasan's deadly rampage.

Reasoner is 20 years younger than Hasan. The pair became friends through the local mosque in Killeen - the nearest town to the vast army camp - where Hasan regularly prayed and where Reasoner, who was brought up as a Catholic, was completing his conversion to Islam.

According to reports in the New York Times and elsewhere, Reasoner is a substitute teacher whose parents work on the Fort Hood base. He was being mentored by Hasan in the ways of Islam. But the older man, who is single, would also treat him to dinner at the Golden Corral steakhouse in Killeen and on two occasions invited Reasoner to his apartment - the second time being last Wednesday night, just hours before Hasan went on his killing spree.

Hasan once gave a lecture about Islam to fellow doctors in which he said non-believers should be beheaded

Reasoner was quoted in the New York Times as saying that Hasan had recently been told he would be sent to Afghanistan on November 28, and he did not like it.

"He said he should quit the Army," Reasoner said. "In the Koran, you're not supposed to have alliances with Jews or Christian or others, and if you are killed in the military fighting against Muslims, you will go to hell."

But when he was interviewed by Gavin Lee of the BBC, he went further.

Reasoner: "I'm not going to condemn him for what he did. I don't know why he did it. I will not, absolutely not, condemn him for what he had done though. If he had done it for selfish reasons I still will not condemn him. He's my brother in the end. I will never condemn him."

Lee: "There might be a lot of people shocked to hear you say that."

Reasoner: "Well, that's the way it is. I don't speak for the community here but me personally I will not condemn him."

Lee: "What are your thoughts towards those that were victims in this?"

Reasoner: "They were, in the end, they were troops who were going to Afghanistan and Iraq to kill Muslims. I honestly have no pity for them. It's just like the majority of the people that will hear this, after five or six minutes they'll be shocked, after that they'll forget about them and go on their day."

Evidence has also emerged to suggest that Hasan himself was not just a "devout" Muslim, but was more extreme in his beliefs than reported on Friday. Several former colleagues have come forward to say he would tell them: "I am a Muslim first and an American second".

The Daily Telegraph claims that when he was still at the Walter Reed medical centre in Washington DC, where he worked for six years before being transferred to Fort Hood this summer, Hasan once gave a lecture about Islam to fellow doctors in which he said non-believers should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats.

His colleagues had been expecting a discussion about a medical issue when Hasan treated them instead to an hour-long diatribe about the Koran.

As The First Post concluded on Friday, in the immediate aftermath of the shooting spree, questions would be asked as to why no one spotted Hasan's fragile state of mind. The report of the Walter Reed episode suggests that the tragedy at Fort Hood might have been averted.

LAST UPDATED 5:59 AM, NOVEMBER 10, 2009

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In recent years we've all been exposed to the callous nature of radicalised muslims. It hasn't lost its capacity to shock. Duane Reasoner Jr is a teenager whose belief system is full of absolutes. He'll either grow up to realise that what he's been taught has very little to do with the Koran or he'll die as cannon fodder in the current so-called jihad.

Posted by Mark Hale at 8:46am on November 9, 2009

I suppose PC idiocy that sees no evil has taken hold in the US as in the UK and Europe, with anything critical of Muslims labelled Islamophobia, so no one dare mention the elephant in the room. Sounds to me he should have been labeled a dangerously deranged Islamist and kept away from guns and explosives. How many more are there waiting their time? It doesn't take a right wing loonie to see Islam is a toxic cult, a brain virus, which perverts normal thinking and turns people into homicidal maniacs. Wake up time.

Posted by Peter Simmons at 10:22am on November 9, 2009

737 U.S. Military Bases outside the US. Who is the aggressor in this world ? Quote: "a toxic cult, a brain virus, which perverts normal thinking and turns people into homicidal maniacs." Could be called US Patriotism. Iraq Body Count 92,489 - 100,971 violent civilian deaths as a result of the conflict. If it's US deaths we morn, if it's 100,000 somewhere *out there* we shrug.

Posted by Joseph Jahn at 12:29pm on November 9, 2009

It is so sad that hatred can be passed on and that young people can believe that violence is some kind of answer to violence. We must take better care of our children. I hope this young man will grow to understand the evil of what his "mentor" did without having to hate the man.

Posted by MHF at 1:40pm on November 9, 2009

"Iraq Body Count 92,489 - 100,971 violent civilian deaths as a result of the conflict. If it's US deaths we morn, if it's 100,000 somewhere *out there* we shrug." Joseph Jahn 12.29 p.m. Who is 'we'? The greater number of violent deaths in Iraq today as yesterday have been perpetrated by Moslems on fellow Moslems. If one blames the U.S.A. for these deaths then by logic one must blame Winston Churchill for the deaths of thousands of French Resistence members. No, it is quite ridiculous to blame the Fort Hood tragedy on American foreign policy. There is still, despite this rather obtuse interview, no reason to blame anyone further than the one who pulled the trigger. To do so would be to grace this crime with a veneer of justification, something bank robbers and child murders are routinely and correctly denied.

Posted by Barry Larking at 7:01pm on November 9, 2009

*We* are all those that don't dig deeper than the media news. "If one blames the U.S.A. for these deaths" Who else ? Who is it that made up lies in order to invade, destroy and destabilize a country facilitating this kind of violence ? Of course if it's *just* Muslim on Muslim it doesn't count, right ? Create chaos and abdicate responsibility. You say it's only the shooter. Very black and white, very simple. Sure, just say that, and go about your wars. Just wave the flag, don't investigate the reason why a full major in the army would consider it correct to open fire on a *bright sunny day*. Just a glitch in the program.

Posted by Joseph Jahn at 8:51pm on November 10, 2009

'We' now both accept the deaths in Iraq and now Afghanistan are caused by intolerance Ã¢?? the wrong sort of Moslems are being killed to pave the way to a 'better future' apparently. This is confirmatory: the enemy is the world itself, indistinguishable and malevolent. So a country of one's birth and one which fed, educated and promoted you to a position of responsibility can be re-paid with randomised violence, allegedly calling on God whilst so engaged. If one wishes to condemn recent American foreign policy I suggest this incident is a poor place to begin.

Posted by Barry Larking at 9:29am on November 11, 2009

It's not recent. Cultivating a culture of violence is everyday business as usual . What I am suggesting is that, one can not constantly, day by day glorify guns, the military, revenge, violence, war, and gansters without somehow having an effect the life around you. Patriotism seems to always involve killing *them*. My views are not political, they are simply the difference between ways of being in this world. When the only solutions to a problem the society *seems* to offer is a lawyer, money or a gun, some people will use guns. It's not enough to say, oh no don't use a gun in this situation, when citizens are being bombarded day after day with the exactly opposite signals. This shooting and this man are not isolated and the answer is not more revenge. This is not a Hollywood movie.

Posted by Joseph Jahn at 9:05am on November 14, 2009

BTW, I'm not suggesting that the society change in any way, just stop being so surprised at the consequences. And stop looking outside for the cause.

Posted by Joseph Jahn at 9:54am on November 14, 2009

Joseph, I think you are labouring under a misconception. I am not an American. Here we do not glorify guns. And I am afraid there is rather a lot of evidence for *them* killing us because we are *us* and over a long time. But, that said, I do not consider this terrible incident as more than it is Ã¢?? a single individual acting alone. Doubtless tis shooting will be claimed otherwise, as you do, as evidence for this political position or indeed its complete opposite. I think it poor evidence.

Posted by Barry Larking at 4:19pm on November 15, 2009