Live-streamed execution: Pentagon to broadcast Major Hasan's death online

The US Department of Defense will stream the execution of former major and army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan online on 3 December. In November 2009, Hasan killed 13 people and wounded 30 at the Fort Hood military base in Texas. The date was confirmed by the Pentagon, and the broadcast was announced by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Hegseth justified the broadcast like this:

"We will make sure people can watch it, that the event is public, because people have to understand that such acts have serious consequences." (translated)

Asked whether Hasan had asked President Donald Trump for a pardon, the secretary replied that he was not interested.

"I'll see you on 3 December." (translated)

The execution will take place at 1 pm, the hour at which Hasan committed his crime. It will be carried out by a firing squad of soldiers at the same base where the attack happened.

When the US last did this

At the start of the week, the Pentagon announced that Trump had approved the execution. If it goes ahead as planned, it will be the first execution of a US military service member since 1961 and the first military execution by firing squad since the Second World War. In 1961, soldier John Bennett was hanged for rape and attempted murder, but in front of a small group of witnesses and without any wider broadcast.

The last public execution in the US took place in 1936, when Rainey Bethea was hanged in Kentucky. According to RTV SLO, the Slovenian public broadcaster, thousands of people watched it. According to Reuters, this is the first such televised execution in US history. The media have tried in the past to broadcast executions, but courts stopped them. Experts say no other country is known to have lawfully broadcast an execution live on television or online. Public executions are rare today, but are carried out in, for example, Iran and Afghanistan.

The White House would not say whether Trump supports the broadcast and referred questions to the Pentagon.

Experts are wary

Eugene Fidell, a lawyer and military law expert who teaches at Yale Law School, told Reuters:

"Broadcasting such an event live would be extremely, extremely unusual." (translated)

He added that if Hasan wanted to prevent the public broadcast of his death, he would have to file a lawsuit in federal court. Military justice historian Jonathan Lurie believes there are no convincing reasons for a public broadcast: who would even want to watch it, he asks.

Who Hasan is

At the time of the attack, Hasan was a military psychiatrist in the Army medical service. A civilian police officer who responded to the attack shot him and left him partly paralysed. In August 2013, a military jury found him guilty on 45 counts, including premeditated murder and attempted murder, and sentenced him to death. At trial he represented himself, called no witnesses, did not testify and did not try to deny the charges.

He carried out the attack a few weeks before his deployment to Afghanistan, motivated by US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. He had been in contact with Anwar al-Awlaki, an alleged member of Al Qaeda who later died in a US strike in Yemen. The White House has described Hasan's actions as a terrorist attack.

The date and time were set only a few days after Tennessee inmate Christa Pike survived two doses of lethal injection in late September, suffering burns and blisters.

Civilian executions by firing squad are rare in the US. The method is currently permitted in Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah. In 2025, South Carolina carried out the first such execution in that state in 15 years.