Pentagon Plans Livestreamed Firing Squad Execution of Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood, Drawing Bipartisan Condemnation

On December 3, at 1 pm Central Time, Nidal Malik Hasan is scheduled to stand before a firing squad at Fort Hood, Texas. It is the same base, the same day of the week and the same hour as the afternoon in November 2009 when the former Army psychiatrist opened fire on fellow soldiers. The Pentagon wants the execution broadcast live, and that plan has set off one of the more unusual political fights of the season.

Hasan was convicted of killing 13 people, 12 of them fellow soldiers, and wounding 32 others in the 2009 attack. He described it as an act of jihad and targeted soldiers preparing to deploy to Afghanistan. Responding officers shot him, and he was left paralysed from the waist down. He was sentenced to death in 2013, and President Donald Trump approved the execution on October 2. Hasan was born in Arlington, Virginia, to Palestinian immigrant parents, and The Washington Post reports his mother's family came from Al-Bireh, near Ramallah.

War Secretary Pete Hegseth called the attack a radical Islamist one and defended the broadcast as a matter of deterrence. He said Hasan would face a firing squad of soldiers and that the public should be able to watch, because people need to understand there are serious consequences. He called the choice of location and timing a no-brainer. Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell stressed that Hasan killed 13 and wounded 32 while shouting Allahu Akbar.

The pushback has come from both parties. Republican Senator Thom Tillis, who supports the death sentence, wrote on X that streaming it was beyond disgusting and the kind of thing Iran and Afghanistan do. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy asked on CNN whether Hegseth was mimicking Islamic State executions, and called public executions medieval. Republican Senator John Curtis warned against cultivating an appetite for executions as entertainment. Representative Austin Scott said livestreaming killings is what jihadists do, and Representative Rob Bresnahan said victims and families deserve respect rather than a show.

Religious and international voices have joined in. Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, called the plan a barbaric promotion of a culture of death. On October 10, World Day Against the Death Penalty, Pope Leo XIV reiterated his opposition to capital punishment, though he did not name Hasan or the Pentagon. In Geneva, UN Human Rights Office spokesperson Shabia Mantoo said public executions amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and would breach the absolute prohibition on torture.

The White House itself is wavering. Trump said he does not care how Hasan goes as long as he goes, and that he has not decided on the livestream. Vice President JD Vance told reporters in Cincinnati he does not know that it will actually happen, and that he will not be watching. Joe Kent, who resigned earlier this year as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, warned that broadcasting the death could hand extremist groups propaganda for recruitment and radicalisation.

The history is stark. The last widely recognised public execution in the US was the hanging of Rainey Bethea in Owensboro, Kentucky, on August 14, 1936, before thousands of spectators. The last military firing squad execution was Private Eddie Slovik in 1945, for desertion; the military's last execution by any method was the 1961 hanging of Private John Bennett.

Much remains unanswered. The Pentagon has not said why a conventional execution with designated witnesses would not convey its message, nor which platform would carry a stream or whether it would be available worldwide. It has not said whether victims' families will be invited, or how the firing squad will be chosen. CNN notes Army Regulation 190-55 limits who may witness military executions and bars minors, with waivers possible; whether a broadcast fits those rules is unresolved. Hasan's lawyer, John Galligan, told ABC News the plan is political theatre and questioned moving Hasan from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to Fort Hood. Alonzo Lunsford, shot seven times in 2009, supports the execution and wants to attend, but believes any broadcast should be limited to survivors and families.

Legal experts say challenges in civilian federal courts could still delay the date. The Pentagon says more details will come later.