MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

US plans its first military execution since 1961, by firing squad and livestreamed

Hasan, then an Army major, opened fire with a semi-automatic pistol on November 5, 2009, at a medical centre on the base where soldiers were being prepared for deployment to Afghanistan

The Pentagon will livestream the firing-squad execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, the military psychiatrist who killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, scheduled for December 3. It will be the first execution carried out by the US armed forces since 1961, the first by firing squad since 1945 and the first publicly broadcast in the country’s history.

“The secretary is right. It will be livestreamed. Details will be released later,” a senior Defense Department official confirmed. The secretary, Pete Hegseth, had announced the plan in an interview with the Human Events Daily programme on the conservative network Real America’s Voice. “We’ll make sure people can see it, that it’s public. Because people need to understand that there are serious consequences for this kind of thing,” he said. Asked about the condemned man’s last wishes, he replied: “I don’t care. We’ll see him on December 3.”

The execution will take place at Fort Hood around 1pm, at the same site and close to the time of the shooting. Military law requires presidential approval for a firing-squad execution; the Pentagon said on Monday that President Donald Trump had given it on Hegseth’s recommendation.

Hasan, then an Army major, opened fire with a semi-automatic pistol on November 5, 2009, at a medical centre on the base where soldiers were being prepared for deployment to Afghanistan. He killed 13 people and wounded 32. A military jury sentenced him to death in August 2013. He represented himself, admitted the attack and said he had “switched sides” to defend the Taliban. He was left paraplegic by police gunfire and is held at the Fort Leavenworth military prison in Kansas. The Supreme Court declined to review his case in March 2025.

The last military execution was that of Private John Bennett, hanged in 1961. In 2008, President George W. Bush approved the execution of Ronald Gray, but a federal court stayed it. The last public execution in the United States took place in 1936 in Owensboro, Kentucky.

Since 1976 only six civilians have been executed by firing squad in the country, three in Utah and three in South Carolina, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The Trump administration expanded the execution methods authorised for the most serious federal crimes, partly because of difficulties obtaining lethal injection drugs.