The execution of Nidal Hasan, the former US Army major who shot dead 13 soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009, will be shown to the public by livestream, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has said.
A Defense Department official told the BBC that the firing-squad execution would be livestreamed. If it goes ahead, it is thought it would be the first public execution in the United States in nearly a century.
John Mills, a lawyer who works with inmates sentenced to death, described the decision as “unprecedented in the modern era” and said it stands “on uncertain legal terrain”.
Hegseth said: “We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public.” He added: “People need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.”
Earlier this week the Pentagon announced it would carry out Hasan’s execution — the first military execution in more than 60 years.
Speaking to the conservative TV outlet Real America’s Voice, Hegseth said Hasan is “gonna get a firing squad of soldiers. As it should be”.
Asked whether Hasan had made any final requests or contacted President Donald Trump, Hegseth replied: “Don’t care. We’ll see him on December 3rd.”
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said on Monday that the defence secretary had made the recommendation and that Trump approved it. The BBC has asked the White House whether Trump supports a publicly livestreamed execution.
The execution is due to take place at Fort Hood in Texas on 3 December, the secretary of the US Army said on Tuesday. It would be the first military execution by firing squad since the end of the Second World War.
Hasan, an Army psychiatrist from Virginia, admitted in court that he was the gunman in the deadliest ever non-combat attack on an American military base. The shooting on 5 November 2009 happened in a crowded medical building where soldiers preparing to deploy were waiting for check-ups and vaccines.
During his 2013 court martial, Hasan apologised for “any mistakes” and said he believed he was protecting Muslims and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Under military law, an execution requires the US president’s approval, an appellate review in which a higher court inspects the decision, and a final judgment on its legality. Mills said Hasan’s appellate process is not finished and that he is likely to seek review of his conviction and sentence in federal court, which would probably stay the execution. Mills added that he would be surprised if the execution happened.
“Seeking to make it livestreamed, a firing squad execution, is little more than attention-seeking by the Trump administration and is unlikely to occur, much less deliver any semblance of justice,” he said.
Eugene R Fidell, a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School, told the BBC it was a “really unfortunate decision”. He said: “To livestream an execution is just so out of the Middle Ages. In a way, we are so past that as a society, at least I thought so until today.” Fidell said that if Hasan pursued legal action, the proceedings would last years and “far longer than President Trump’s term in the White House”.
Several states require some form of public viewing of executions. Many oblige journalists to be present and let the person due to be executed invite people, while others also allow ordinary citizens to volunteer as witnesses. Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham University who has studied US execution methods, said “there hasn’t ever been a livestreamed execution”.
She said a livestream would “force a level of transparency that we have probably never seen before in this country”. Noting that more than half the country wants the death penalty even though its use is declining, she said an argument could be made that “if you want the death penalty, then we are going to show you how it’s conducted in this country”, forcing people to realise what happens in a way many ignore. Denno said important considerations include whether a stream would be age-restricted and whether it would contravene the policies of the platform hosting the viewing.
It is unclear where the livestream will be available. Most major social media platforms restrict or prohibit livestreaming explicit content, and Meta, YouTube, TikTok and X — the most widely used platforms capable of streaming live video — have prohibitions on violent images and videos as well as those showing death. Meta, the owner of Instagram, Facebook and Threads, explicitly bans any live stream of capital punishment, and TikTok has a similar blanket ban, stating: “We don’t allow extremely graphic, violent, or disturbing content—especially when it could cause viewers emotional distress.” X, which has loosened content moderation since Elon Musk took over, says content depicting a person’s death will be removed “if we receive a request from their family or an authorized representative”. The BBC has reached out to the companies for comment. Truth Social, the platform owned by Trump, does not offer users a live-stream video feature.
Amnesty International data shows the countries that carried out the most executions last year were China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the US, in that order. More than 2,700 executions took place across 17 countries, but only two nations carried them out publicly: 11 known public executions were carried out in Iran in 2025 and another six in Afghanistan.
Trump has never publicly advocated for a public execution, though he has long supported the death penalty. In 1989, for example, he took out large ads in The New York Times calling for the execution of the group dubbed the Central Park Five, who had been convicted of rape and assault charges but were later exonerated. He has previously condemned public executions in Iran, citing the Iranian government’s potential killing of protesters as a possible justification for military intervention before attacking the country earlier this year.
The US government had not executed anyone for 17 years until the final year of Trump’s first term, when it conducted a flurry of 13 executions. After returning to office last January, Trump swiftly overturned predecessor Joe Biden’s moratorium on federal executions and signed an executive order aimed at “restoring” the death penalty and “protecting public safety”.
The last military execution in the country took place in 1961, when a US Army private was hanged after being convicted of raping an 11-year-old Austrian girl. The execution was authorised by then-President Dwight D Eisenhower and went ahead even though the victim’s family asked his successor, John F Kennedy, for clemency. The last military execution by firing squad took place in January 1945, when a young US Army deserter, Eddie Slovik, was shot during the final months of the Second World War.
The BBC’s Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu and Kali Hays contributed additional reporting.
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