(AFP) – Condemnation of the Pentagon’s plan to livestream the firing squad execution of a convicted military base mass shooter escalated Friday, with the UN saying it would amount to torture and US lawmakers from both parties slamming the move. Nidal Hasan’s execution — which is scheduled for December 3 at Fort Hood, where he gunned down 13 people in 2009 — is set to be the first by US military firing squad since 1945.
Senator Thom Tillis, a member of US President Donald Trump’s Republican Party, said Hasan should be put to death, but that streaming it would be “beyond disgusting.” “Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do,” Tillis said. Representative Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said the plan is “disturbing and makes a mockery of our legal system.” A Pentagon official told AFP the execution would be streamed live, after US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, “we’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public.” Later, Hegseth wrote “Correct” when retweeting a media report about the planned livestream.
The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights condemned the move, saying in a message sent to AFP on Friday that “the livestreaming of an execution is tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture.” Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, said it was a “barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered.”
Hegseth said it would be the military’s first firing squad execution since World War II — a reference to the case of Eddie Slovik, who was put to death for desertion in 1945. “People need to understand that… there’s serious consequence for these types of things,” Hegseth said in a video disseminated Thursday on official Pentagon X accounts. “I kind of like the mentality we had in World War II, which was win, which was understand when the enemy attacks you, you need to stand your ground,” Hegseth said.
The last US military execution was carried out in 1961, when John Bennett was hanged for rape and attempted murder. The Death Penalty Information Center says that 135 soldiers have been executed by the US military since 1916. According to rights group Amnesty International, at least 17 public executions are known to have been carried out in 2025 — six in Afghanistan and 11 in Iran.
The Pentagon announced earlier this week that Trump had approved Hasan’s execution for carrying out the Al-Qaeda-inspired attack at the base in Texas. Twelve of those Hasan killed and 30 of the wounded were soldiers. He was shot and partially paralyzed by a civilian police officer who responded to the attack. Hasan chose to conduct his own defense during the trial but called no witnesses and gave no testimony, and made no attempt to deny the charges. He was sentenced to death by a military jury in 2013.
Court-appointed defense attorneys expressed concern that he was seeking execution. The court that convicted Hasan was told he was opposed to the US military’s occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and that he had spoken online with an alleged Al-Qaeda figure, radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen subsequently killed in a US drone strike in Yemen. While mass shootings in the United States are common, they are relatively rare at military facilities. The furor over Hasan’s impending execution comes just days after convicted murderer Christa Pike survived a botched execution in the US state of Tennessee, fueling debate about the death penalty in the country.
– W.G. DUNLOP
© 2024 AFP
