‘I had questions about what his beliefs were’

IN retrospect, the signs of Major Nidal Malik Hasan’s growing anger over the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan seem unmistakable.

But even people who worried his increasingly strident views were clouding his ability to serve the US military could not predict the murderous rampage of which he now stands accused.

In the months leading to Thursday’s shooting spree that left 13 people dead and 29 others wounded, Hasan raised eyebrows with comments that the war on terror was “a war on Islam” and wrestled with what to tell fellow Muslim solders who had their doubts about fighting in Islamic countries.