US to livestream Army firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter, Pentagon says

WASHINGTON, Oct 8 (Reuters) - The US will livestream the Army's upcoming firing squad execution of a gunman who killed 13 people at the Fort Hood military base in 2009, the Pentagon said, in what would be an unprecedented broadcast of a US execution.

Nidal Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, is set to become the first person to be executed by firing squad by the US military since 1945.

The execution is scheduled for December 3 at the same sprawling Texas base where Hasan opened fire with a laser-sighted handgun in a medical facility. It comes amid heightened debate in the US over the death penalty following the botched lethal injection of a Tennessee woman last week.

"It will be livestreamed. Details will follow," a Pentagon official told Reuters, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who championed the push to execute Hasan by firing squad, confirmed plans to livestream the execution in an X post.

Media have sought to televise US executions in the past but have been blocked by the courts. No other country is known to televise or livestream a legal execution, experts said.

Public executions have become exceedingly rare worldwide. Among countries known to conduct them in recent years are Iran and Taliban-run Afghanistan.

Extrajudicial lynchings in the United States, often by white mobs targeting Black Americans, were public spectacles well into the 20th century. The last legally sanctioned public execution in the United States was conducted in 1936, death penalty experts said. Thousands watched that 1936 hanging of a young Black man who had been convicted of raping a white woman.

Hegseth told the Human Events Daily program that deciding to execute Hasan by firing squad at Fort Hood on a Thursday at 1 p.m. — the approximate time, day of the week and location of the 2009 shooting — was a "no-brainer."

"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 said.

Asked if 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.

The shooting came weeks before Hasan, now 56, was scheduled to be deployed to Afghanistan. He was left partially paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair from being shot by police during his arrest.

Under US military law, a US president must approve an execution by firing squad. President Donald Trump did so on Hegseth's recommendation, the Pentagon said on Monday.