Friday, October 9, 2026 - US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said the firing squad execution of convicted military base shooter Nidal Hasan will be “public,” according to a video shared Thursday by the Pentagon.
“He’s going to get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should
be, and we’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public,”
Hegseth told right-wing influencer Jack Posobiec in a clip posted on X by
various official Pentagon accounts.
“People need to understand that… there’s serious consequence
for these types of things,” Hegseth said, speaking aboard the USS Abraham
Lincoln aircraft carrier.
Asked to clarify what Hegseth meant by the execution being
“public,” a Pentagon spokesperson referred AFP to the US Army, which in turn
said to contact the Pentagon.
According to rights group Amnesty International, at least 17
public executions are known to have been carried out last year — six in
Afghanistan and 11 in Iran.
The Pentagon announced earlier this week that US President
Donald Trump had approved Hasan’s execution for the 2009 fatal shooting of 13
people at Fort Hood.
Twelve of the dead and 30 of the wounded were soldiers.
Hasan was shot and partially paralysed by a civilian police officer who
responded to the attack.
He was sentenced to death by a military jury in 2013 for
carrying out the Al-Qaeda inspired attack.
The court that convicted Hasan was told that he was opposed
to the US military’s occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and that he had
spoken online with an alleged Al-Qaeda figure, radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki,
an American citizen subsequently killed in a US drone strike in Yemen.
Hasan’s execution will be the first carried out by the US
military since 1961.
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