WASHINGTON, - The man who killed 12 people at a Texas military base had joined the army against his parents' wishes, officials and media reports said.
Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who was shot and wounded after his rampage at Fort Hood, was a military psychiatrist who dealt with troops returning from combat and faced his own imminent deployment, officials said.
But he also battled harassment based on his Muslim faith and "Middle Eastern ethnicity," according to his cousin Nader Hasan, and was seeking to leave the military.
"He hired a military attorney to try to have the issue resolved, pay back the government, to get out of the military. He was at the end of trying everything," Hasan told Fox News.
"I don't think he's ever been disenchanted with the military," he said. "It was the harassment."
Hasan's relatives said that he had been harassed in the military because of his Muslim faith and did not want to go to Iraq.
His family said had been harrassed because of his Muslim faith and he was "mortified" at the prospect of going to Iraq.
Major Hasan had specialized in disaster and preventive psychiatry, serving his residency at Washington DC's Walter Reed military hospital, before being transferred to Texas, and was headed for Iraq this month.
He "was scheduled to be deployed and was upset about that," Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, who had spoken to a general at Fort Hood about Hasan, told CNN.
Nader Hasan said Major Hasan had not previously exhibited violent tendencies.
"He wasn't somebody who even enjoyed going to the firing range, you know, this wasn't somebody who had that kind of mindset," he said.
The army major was born in the United States to Palestinian parents who had emigrated from a small town near Jerusalem, his cousin said, quoted by the New York Times.
He was raised in Virginia, and attended school in Roanoke before going to Virginia Tech university, scene of another mass shooting in April 2007.
He received his medical license on July 12, 2005, according to Virginia Board of Medicine records.
A former colleague of Hasan's hinted that the Major may have acted on a revenge impulse.
"He said, 'maybe the Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor'," Colonel Terry Lee told Fox News.
Fort Hood base commander Lieutenant General Robert Cone said the attack did not seem to be linked to terrorism.
"I couldn't rule that out but I'm telling you that right now, the evidence does not suggest that," he told reporters.
Churches urge 'resistance' to Israeli settlements