'He was mortified by the idea of having to deploy'

WASHINGTON - Born and reared in Virginia, the son of immigrant parents from a small town near Jerusalem, he joined the Army right out of high school, against his parents' wishes. The Army, in turn, put him through college and then medical school, where he trained to be a psychiatrist.

But Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the 39-year-old man accused of Thursday's mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, started having second thoughts about his military career after enduring name-calling and harassment about his Muslim faith for years after 9/11, he told relatives in Virginia.

As authorities scrambled to figure out what happened, a hazy and contradictory picture emerged of a man who received all of his medical training from the military and spent all of his career in the Army, yet turned so violently against his own. A man who despite devout religious practices -- praying every day at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, Md., and refusing to take photos with female co-workers -- he listed himself in Army records as having no religious preference, co-workers said.

A man, who despite asking to be discharged from the Army, according to his aunt, was on the eve of his first deployment to war.

His relatives and co-workers said he had expressed deep concerns about being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. Having counseled scores of returning soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder, first at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and more recently at Fort Hood, he knew all too well the terrifying realities of war, said a cousin, Nader Hasan.

"He was mortified by the idea of having to deploy," Nader Hasan said. "He had people telling him on a daily basis the horrors they saw over there."

His aunt, Noel Hasan, of Falls Church, Va., said he had sought for several years to be discharged from the military -- because of the harassment he had received as a Muslim -- even offering to repay for his medical training.

"He must have snapped. They ignored him," his aunt said. "He was not a fighter, even as a child and young man."

Nader Hasa said of his cousin: "It was harassment by fellow soldiers "that got to him." He said soldiers referred to his cousin's "Mideast ethnicity even though he was born and raised here."

He said his cousin's parents had both been U.S. citizens who owned businesses, including restaurants and a store, in Roanoke, Va. He declined to confirm reports that they were Jordanian, but said the parents had immigrated from a small town near Jerusalem years ago.

Nidal Hasan "did not make many friends" and "did not make friends fast," his aunt said. He had no girlfriend and was not married. "He would tell us the military was his life," she said.

Records show that Nidal Hasan had received his undergraduate degree in biochemistry at Virginia Tech University and his medical degree at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md.

A military official who had access to Nidal Hasan's military record said he received a poor performance evaluation while at Walter Reed.

He transferred to the Darnell Army Medical Center at Fort Hood this year.

The FBI had earlier become aware of Internet postings by a man who called himself Nidal Hasan, a law enforcement official said. The postings discussed suicide bombing in a favorable light, but the investigators were not clear whether the writer was Nidal Hasan.

And the psychiatrist once said that "Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor" and that the United States shouldn't be fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the first place, according to an interview with Col. Terry Lee, a former colleague, on Fox News. He said the major "was hoping that President Obama would pull troops out. When things weren't going that way, he became more agitated."

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said Hasan "took a lot of advanced training in shooting."

"His parents didn't want him to go into the military," Nader Hasan said. "He said, 'No, I was born and raised here, I'm going to do my duty to the country.'"