Nidal Hasan to face firing squad on December 3, Hegseth says execution will be livestreamed

Nidal Hasan, the former Army officer and psychiatrist who killed 13 people at the Fort Hood military base in Texas in 2009, will be executed by firing squad later this year. According to US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, the execution will be made public and the entire process will be livestreamed.

In an exclusive interview, Mr Hegseth said a firing squad of soldiers would carry out the sentence on Hasan at 1 pm on Thursday, December 3, at Fort Hood itself, which is now also called Fort Cavazos. It will be the first execution in the US military to be carried out in more than 60 years. Mr Hegseth said society, and those who think of committing such crimes, must clearly see the consequences of such heinous acts, which is why making the execution public and livestreaming it is essential.

The Pentagon said the attack was carried out by a radicalised man in uniform on his own country's soldiers, and the step has been taken to send a message of military discipline and national security. President Donald Trump has formally approved Mr Hegseth's recommendation, which fully clears the way for the execution.

On November 5, 2009, Hasan, then a Major in the US Army and a psychiatrist, opened fire at the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood. He fired indiscriminately at soldiers who had gathered for medical checks before deployment to Afghanistan and Iraq. Thirteen people, including 12 soldiers, were killed on the spot and more than 32 were seriously injured. Hasan was badly wounded when a woman police officer shot him, and a spinal injury left him permanently paralysed.

A military jury sentenced Hasan to death in 2013. He has since been held in the high-security military prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. The investigation found that before the attack Hasan had been in regular contact with Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical cleric in Yemen linked to al-Qaeda. During the court martial, Hasan himself admitted that he had done it to stop American soldiers from fighting against Muslims in Afghanistan.

After the Fort Hood attack, the stance of the Barack Obama administration triggered a major political controversy in the US. The Pentagon and the Obama administration initially treated the incident as workplace violence rather than a terrorist attack. Because of this classification, the families of the soldiers killed and the wounded could not receive combat-related benefits and the Purple Heart medal. The victims' relatives were deeply angered by this. In his interview, Mr Hegseth raised the old issue again and criticised the Obama administration's stand.

The US Army last carried out a sentence by firing squad in November 1945, during the Second World War. The last execution of any kind in the military was on April 13, 1961, by hanging. Five US states, Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah, currently have legal provisions for execution by firing squad. The Trump administration has changed the rules for federal death sentences to revive the firing squad option.

According to an Amnesty International report, firing squads are also used in countries such as China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and the United Arab Emirates. The livestream on December 3 is likely to spark a fresh debate among human rights groups and legal experts over whether a public execution is justified.