The Pentagon has confirmed it will live-stream the execution of Nidal Hasan, the former US Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009, by firing squad. The execution is set for December at Fort Hood, marking the US military's first execution since 1961 and its first by firing squad since the Second World War.
Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth vowed to livestream the execution. 'We'll make sure that people are able to watch it,' he said on conservative network Real America's Voice News.
Massacre and trial
On November 5, 2009, Hasan murdered 13 people, including a pregnant soldier, and wounded 32 more at Fort Hood. A month later, he was charged with thirteen counts of pre-meditated murder and thirty-two counts of attempted murder under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which made him eligible for the death penalty.
Investigators recovered 146 shell casings inside the building where Hasan opened fire on soldiers queuing for medical checks before deployment. He bought the pistol legally from a gun shop near the base, months after the FBI had intercepted his emails to an al-Qaeda cleric. The attack was the deadliest shooting ever to take place on a US military base.
Criticism from victims' families
Keely Vanacker, whose father Michael Cahill was killed at Fort Hood, said on Fox News: 'He's already dead to me. It's been 17 years – he's just not somebody I think about'. She added: 'The firing squad is a little weird to me – I don't quite understand that, it makes it a circus and brings attention'.
Hasan was shot during the attack and is paralysed from the waist down. Documents during his 2013 trial revealed he had told military mental health staff he could 'still be a martyr' if the government executed him.
Comparison with other terrorists
Hashem Abedi, who helped plan the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017 in which his brother Salman killed 22 people, is serving a minimum of 55 years for murder and will be nearly 80 before he can be considered for parole. Michael Adebolajo, convicted of murdering Lee Rigby, will die in prison. Their names barely register, unlike the attention Hasan's execution is set to receive.
After the Christchurch mosque attacks, New Zealand's then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern vowed never to say the gunman's name, and the terrorist has faded into obscurity. The execution is scheduled for a Thursday at 1pm at Fort Hood, roughly the day, time and place of the massacre.
