Pentagon Announces Public Livestream of Fort Hood Shooter Nidal Hasan's Firing Squad Execution

The upcoming firing squad execution of Nidal Hasan, the army psychiatrist responsible for killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, will be broadcast live to the public. US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Thursday during Human Events Daily with Jack Posobiec that the execution will take place on December 3 at Fort Hood.

"We'll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it's public," Mr Hegseth stated, adding that the public needs to understand the serious consequences of such actions. A Pentagon official confirmed to Reuters that the event will be livestreamed, with further details to follow.

President Donald Trump recently ordered the use of a firing squad to execute Hasan, a former US Army major who previously described his 2009 shooting spree as retaliation for US wars in the Muslim world. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell stated on X that putting Hasan to death by Army firing squad was approved by Mr Trump following a recommendation from Mr Hegseth. Mr Parnell noted that Hasan shouted "Allahu Akbar" during the attack, which claimed the lives of 12 unarmed active-duty soldiers and one retired serviceman, while wounding 32 others.

Death by firing squad was recently added by the Trump administration as a permissible form of execution for the gravest federal crimes, alongside electrocution and gas asphyxiation. This expansion of federal execution methods comes amid ongoing difficulties in obtaining drugs for lethal injections. Recently, Tennessee's attempt to execute Christa Pike via lethal injection was botched, leaving her hospitalized on life support before she regained consciousness.

A military jury sentenced Hasan to death in August 2013 after finding him guilty of 45 counts of premeditated murder and attempted premeditated murder for opening fire with a laser-sighted handgun at a medical centre on the Texas military base. Now 56 years old, Hasan was left partially paralysed and in a wheelchair after being shot by police during his arrest, just weeks before he was scheduled to be deployed to Afghanistan.

The anti-capital punishment group Death Penalty Action criticized the decision in a statement, asserting that military executions are rare. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a death sentence from a court-martial cannot be carried out without presidential approval. If executed, Hasan's death would mark the first military execution since 1961, when an execution was carried out by hanging, according to the Death Penalty Information Centre. The last known US military firing squad execution occurred in November 1945.