By GB News (World News) | Created at 2026-10-08 23:56:03 | Updated at 2026-10-09 01:16:04
1 hour ago
Pete Hegseth has confirmed the execution of a man convicted of the 2009 Fort Hood shooting by firing squad will be livestreamed.
Nidal Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in a 2009 shooting spree.
Secretary of War Mr Hegseth, who championed the push to execute Hasan by firing squad, had told the Human Events Daily program broadcast by Real America's Voice that he planned to make Hasan's execution public.
One Pentagon official told reporters: "The Secretary is correct. It will be livestreamed. Details will follow."
Mr Hegseth said deciding to execute Hasan by firing squad at Fort Hood on a Thursday at 1pm, the approximate time, day of the week and location of the 2009 shooting, was a "no-brainer."
He continued: "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."
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 for opening fire with a laser-sighted handgun in a medical facility at the sprawling central Texas military base.
The shooting came weeks before Hasan, now 56, was scheduled to be deployed to Afghanistan.
He was left partially paralysed 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, something President Donald Trump did on Mr Hegseth's recommendation, the Pentagon disclosed on Monday.
Mr Hegseth said: "It hasn't been since World War II that we've done that. Well, kind of like the mentality we had in World War II."
President Donald Trump approved the shooting at the instruction of Pete Hegseth
REUTERS
The White House has declined to say whether President Trump supported the livestreaming of the execution, instead referring questions to the Pentagon.
The group Death Penalty Action, which opposes capital punishment, said Hasan's execution would be the first military execution since 1961.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the 1961 execution was carried out by hanging.
The last known executions by US military firing squads were in 1945, the centre reported.
The White House has declined to confirm whether Donald Trump supports the livestreaming
At least five states have firing squads on the books, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
In 2025, South Carolina carried out the first such execution in the United States in 15 years.
Death by firing squad is one of several forms of capital punishment the Trump administration recently added to permissible forms of execution for the gravest of federal crimes, along with electrocution and gas asphyxiation.
The number of federal execution options was expanded in part because of increasing difficulties in obtaining drugs for lethal injections, which have also sometimes proved challenging to carry out.
Plans by the state of Tennessee to execute a woman for the first time in more than 200 years went awry last week when prison personnel botched attempts to administer a lethal injection, leaving the death-row inmate, Christa Pike, alive but hospitalised.
Her lawyers said on Wednesday she awoke "angry and confused" in a hospital.
Pike remains very sick and shackled to her hospital bed, they said.
