Fort Hood Defendant Says "I Am the Shooter" LM Otero/Associated Press Reporters who will observe the court martial of Major Hasan are escorted to the courthouse in Texas on Tuesday. KILLEEN, Tex. - Nearly four years after going on a deadly shooting rampage at the Fort Hood Army base here in 2009, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan told a jury of senior Army officers on Tuesday that "the evidence will clearly show that I am the shooter." In an opening statement that took little more than a minute, Major Hasan, seated and speaking quietly, said that there was death and destruction on both sides, but that the evidence presented by the prosecution would show only one side. He described himself as being on the wrong side of a war against Islam, and seemed close to offering an apology when he said, "We the mujahedeen are imperfect Muslims." He added, "I apologize for any mistakes I've made in this endeavor." His statement followed an hourlong statement by Col. Steve Hendricks, one of the Army prosecutors, who presented a dramatic retelling of the rampage and how it unfolded. He told the court that Major Hasan methodically went about targeting his victims with a handgun outfitted with two laser sights. Major Hasan, 42, an Army psychiatrist and an American-born Muslim of Palestinian descent, is being tried in a courtroom that is just a few miles from the medical processing center that was the scene of the rampage, one of the deadliest mass shootings at an American military base. Three weeks before he was to deploy to Afghanistan, Major Hasan opened fire inside the Soldier Readiness Processing Center on Nov. 5, 2009, shooting unarmed soldiers and commissioned officers as they tried to hide under desks and tables. His assault left 13 dead and more than 30 others wounded. He wounded at least two by shooting them in the back as they tried to flee the building or take cover. Major Hasan, who has chosen to act as his own lawyer, gave his opening statement to the judge and to the jury of 13 officers as he sat in a wheelchair. He is paralyzed from the waist down after being shot four times by responding police officers. His long-delayed court-martial, which is under tight security, is expected to last several weeks. Major Hasan has been charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder. If convicted, he could become the first American soldier in 52 years to be sent to death row and executed at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. The last death sentence was carried out there in April 1961, with the hanging of John A. Bennett, an Army private who was convicted of the rape and attempted murder of an 11-year-old girl. In addressing the court at the opening of his trial, Major Hasan became the only defendant in recent history to represent himself in a military capital-punishment case. He took on this role after deciding to release his court-appointed lawyers from the Army Trial Defense Service, setting up a legal mismatch with the highly trained prosecution. Major Hasan appeared in camouflage fatigues and the beard he persuaded the court to allow. Although he has a master's degree in public health, he has no formal legal training. His adversaries were three clean-shaven Army prosecutors in their dark formal uniforms. They were led by Col. Michael Mulligan, one of the Army's most aggressive and skillful lawyers. In 2005, he successfully prosecuted Hasan Akbar, an Army sergeant who was convicted and sentenced to death in a grenade attack on his own camp in Kuwait at the start of the Iraq war in 2003. Before joining the Army, Colonel Mulligan played professional hockey in Germany. Major Hasan has acknowledged being the gunman, and for months has suggested in statements inside and outside the courtroom that he saw himself as a suicide bomber striking an enemy that he believed was waging an illegal and immoral war on Islam. He told the judge previously that he carried out the attack to protect Taliban leaders from American soldiers deploying to Afghanistan. In a 2011 jailhouse statement given to Al Jazeera, a satellite broadcasting network based in Qatar, he pledged allegiance to the Islamic fighters known as mujahedeen and thanked them for "serving as role models on how Muslims should stand up against tyranny and aggression." In addition, he exchanged e-mails before the attack with Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical cleric who supported violent jihad and who was killed in 2011 in a C.I.A. drone strike in Yemen.