US to livestream firing squad execution of Fort Hood gunman Nidal Hasan

Washington, United States. The United States will livestream the Army’s planned firing squad execution of Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people at the Fort Hood military base in 2009, the Pentagon said. It would be an unprecedented broadcast of a US execution.

Execution scheduled at Fort Hood

Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, is scheduled to be executed on December 3 at the sprawling Texas base where he opened fire with a laser-sighted handgun in a medical facility. He would be the first person executed by firing squad by the US military since 1945.

The planned execution comes amid heightened debate in the United States over the death penalty following the botched lethal injection of a Tennessee woman last week.

“It will be livestreamed. Details will follow,” a Pentagon official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who championed the push to execute Hasan by firing squad, confirmed the livestream plans in a post on X.

Hegseth outlines plans for public viewing

Hegseth told the Human Events Daily program that choosing to execute Hasan by firing squad at Fort Hood on a Thursday at 1 p.m. — approximately the same time, day of the week and location as the 2009 shooting — was a “no-brainer.”

“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public. Because people need to understand that … there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” Hegseth said.

Broadcast would break with US precedent

Media organisations have previously sought to televise US executions but have been blocked by the courts. Experts said no other country is known to televise or livestream a legal execution.

Public executions have become exceedingly rare worldwide. Iran and Taliban-run Afghanistan are among the countries known to have conducted them in recent years.

In the United States, extrajudicial lynchings, often carried out by white mobs targeting Black Americans, remained public spectacles well into the 20th century.

The last legally sanctioned public execution in the United States took place in 1936, according to death penalty experts. Thousands watched the hanging of a young Black man who had been convicted of raping a white woman.