Pentagon plans public livestream of its first firing squad execution in decades

WASHINGTON — The US Defense Department said on Thursday it will livestream the military’s first firing squad execution in decades, allowing the public to watch as the man who killed 13 people in a 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood is put to death.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth vowed in an interview this week to let the public watch a firing squad execute Nidal Hasan at the same base in Texas where he carried out the massacre.“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 told far-right podcaster Jack Posobiec in an interview aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on Wednesday, drawing swift backlash.Hasan was convicted in July 2013 of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder. During his trial, he told the panel of 13 officers that he was targeting soldiers who would deploy to Afghanistan and “were going to engage in an illegal war.”On the day of the shooting, he started at the medical processing center at Fort Hood, firing on troops there to collect medical checks before they deployed. He then followed soldiers out the back door of the processing center as they fled and was confronted by police, with whom Hasan exchanged gunfire and was eventually struck.The decision to livestream it is “unprecedented in the modern era” and “on uncertain legal terrain,” said John Mills, a lawyer who works with inmates sentenced to death.The UN human rights office told AFP that livestreaming it would be “tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture”.A Pentagon official said Thursday that the execution — which Hegseth recommended and President Donald Trump approved — “will be livestreamed” and Hegseth confirmed it in a post on X.Acting Secretary of the Army Adam Telle set the date for Hasan’s execution for December 3 at 1 p.m. local time.Hegseth said, “We’re going to do it at one o’clock, which is when he did it, and it’s going to be soldiers with rifles executing the firing squad.”The execution by firing squad would be the first of its kind carried out by the US Army since World War II. Hegseth’s pledge to let the public watch the firing squad execution has drawn condemnation on both sides of the aisle.Republican Sen. Thom Tillis late Thursday called it “beyond disgusting.” He said on X, “Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America.”Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat, is stunned — telling CNN’s Erin Burnett that public executions are “medieval.”“I mean, that’s disgusting, what is he mimicking ISIS executions?” Murphy said. “That’s what America has become? That’s pretty extraordinary.”Alonzo Lunsford, a former US Army sergeant who survived the mass shooting on Fort Hood, has said that while he supports the execution of the gunman by firing squad, he is concerned about it being livestreamed.Lunsford, who was shot seven times, told the BBC that the “method is befitting” for Hasan because other methods like lethal injection would be “doing him a favor”.But, he said it was “not something you should view for entertainment purposes”.Speaking to Radio 4’s Today program on Friday, he said: “To show the whole thing without it being censored for the general public, for me personally, I don’t agree with that, but it’s not about my personal belief.”A public livestream of Hasan’s execution could potentially violate the Army regulations governing military capital punishment. Army Regulation 190-55 specifies the types of people permitted to witness a military execution, and it also bars minors from watching the punishment.But the Army’s provost marshal general — a general who oversees military law enforcement — is permitted to waive provisions of the regulation so long as the waiver doesn’t violate the law or a higher binding regulation.