THE United States will livestream the scheduled December 3 firing squad execution of former Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan, who was sentenced to death for killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, a Pentagon official said.
Reuters reported on Friday that the planned broadcast would mark an unprecedented move by the US military, while Hasan would become the first person executed by a military firing squad since 1945.
Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, who advocated Hasan’s execution by firing squad, said in an interview with Human Events Daily, broadcast on Real America’s Voice on Thursday, that the execution would be made public.
“The Secretary is correct. It will be livestreamed. Details will follow,” a Pentagon official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Hegseth said the decision to carry out the execution at Fort Hood at 1pm on a Thursday was intended to mirror the approximate time, day of the week and location of the 2009 shooting.
“It's a no brainer,” he said.
“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 added.
Asked whether Hasan had made any final requests, Hegseth said: “Don't care. We'll see him on December 3.”
A military jury sentenced Hasan to death in August 2013 after finding him guilty of 45 counts of premeditated murder and attempted premeditated murder.
Hasan opened fire with a laser-sighted handgun inside a medical facility at the sprawling Texas military base, weeks before he was scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan.
Now 56, Hasan was shot by police during his arrest, leaving him partially paralysed and confined to a wheelchair.
Under US military law, the president must approve an execution by firing squad. The Pentagon disclosed on Monday that President Donald Trump had approved the execution on Hegseth’s recommendation.
“It hasn't been since World War Two since we've done that. Well, kind of like the mentality we had in World War Two,” Hegseth said.
The White House declined to comment on whether Trump supported livestreaming the execution, referring questions to the Pentagon.
Death Penalty Action, an organisation opposed to capital punishment, said Hasan’s execution would be the first military execution since 1961. According to the Death Penalty Information Centre, that execution was carried out by hanging.
The last known executions by US military firing squads took place in 1945, the centre reported.
At least five US states have firing squads among their authorised execution methods. South Carolina carried out the first firing squad execution in the United States in 15 years in 2025.
Firing squads are among several execution methods the Trump administration has recently added to the permissible options for the most serious federal crimes, alongside electrocution and gas asphyxiation.
The expansion came partly amid growing difficulties in obtaining drugs for lethal injections, which have also presented challenges during executions.
Separately, an attempt by Tennessee authorities to execute death-row inmate Christa Pike last week was halted after prison personnel failed to administer a lethal injection successfully, leaving her alive and hospitalised.
Her lawyers said on Wednesday that she had awoken in hospital “angry and confused”. They said Pike remained seriously ill and shackled to her hospital bed. - October 9, 2026
