Pentagon Says Nidal Malik Hasan’s Firing Squad Execution Will Be Livestreamed

The United States Department of Defense has announced that the scheduled firing squad execution of former Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 people in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, will be livestreamed to the public.

A Pentagon official confirmed the plan on Thursday, October 8, following comments by Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth that the execution would be made public. The execution is scheduled for December 3 at Fort Hood, Texas, where Hasan carried out the attack. Officials said further details about the broadcast would follow.

Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, was convicted by a military court in 2013 of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder. He was sentenced to death after opening fire at the military base’s Soldier Readiness Processing Center on November 5, 2009. The attack killed 13 people and injured 32 others.

President Donald Trump approved Hasan’s execution by firing squad earlier this week, following a recommendation from Hegseth. If carried out as scheduled, it would be the first execution by the US military since 1961 and the first military firing squad execution since 1945.

Hegseth defended the decision to make the execution public, saying people should understand the consequences of such crimes. He also said Fort Hood was selected because it was the site of the 2009 attack. The planned timing is intended to correspond approximately with the time the shooting began.

However, the livestream proposal has prompted questions about the legal and ethical implications of broadcasting an execution. Experts cited by US media have questioned whether existing military regulations provide for such a broadcast and whether making an execution publicly viewable would cross a longstanding boundary in American capital punishment.

Executions in the United States have generally been conducted behind closed doors, with access restricted to authorised witnesses. The last widely recognised public execution in the country took place in 1936. Legal experts say the proposed livestream would be unprecedented for a US government-sanctioned execution.

Hasan may still seek legal relief in federal court that could delay the execution. His former civilian attorney has raised concerns about the process used to notify him of the decision, while Army officials have said they followed the required procedures. The Army has also been working through questions about how to carry out a firing squad execution, a method it has not used in decades.

The announcement comes amid renewed scrutiny of execution procedures in the United States following the failed lethal-injection execution of Tennessee death-row prisoner Christa Pike, who survived the attempt on September 30. The incident has intensified debate about the reliability and administration of capital punishment.

For now, the Pentagon says the livestream will go ahead, although the December 3 date remains subject to any legal proceedings that may arise before the scheduled execution.