Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday he wants the public to be able to watch the firing squad execution of convicted Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan.
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“He’s going to get a firing squad of soldiers. As it should be,” Hegseth said in an interview with far-right political activist Jack Posobiec. “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 did not specify how the execution, which is scheduled for Dec. 3, would be made public. Defense Department representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump approved the firing squad execution of Hasan, a former U.S. Army psychiatrist who opened fire on dozens of people at the Soldier Readiness Processing Center in Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009.
If Hasan’s execution is carried out, it would mark the first U.S. military execution since April 13, 1961, when Army Pvt. John A. Bennett was hanged after being convicted of rape and attempted murder, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, which monitors capital punishment. The military’s last known firing squad execution was carried out by “musketry” on Nov. 9, 1945, according to the group.
“It hadn’t been since World War II since we’ve done that,” Hegseth told Posobiec, describing how he thought it was a “no-brainer” to request a firing squad execution. “Well, I kind of like the mentality we had in World War II, which was win. Which was understand when the enemy attacks you, you stand your ground.”
Hasan, an American-born Muslim, killed 13 people and injured 32 others at the Central Texas Army post where troops were preparing to deploy to Afghanistan. He shouted “Allahu akbar!” meaning “God is great,” before targeting soldiers with a handgun he had fitted with laser sights.
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Hasan, who acted as his own attorney, was convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced to death in 2013. During his court-martial, he admitted responsibility for the shooting, saying he had been on the wrong side of a war against Islam and had switched over.
Hasan was scheduled to go to Afghanistan at the end of November 2009 but did not want to deploy, the court heard.
Execution by firing squad is rare in the United States, permitted in a handful of states: Idaho, Oklahoma, Utah, South Carolina and Mississippi.
Three people in South Carolina were put to death using the method last year, Death Penalty Information Center data shows. Before then, only three people had been executed in this manner since 1977 — all in Utah.
Polling on whether Americans support public executions is similarly scant. One of the most recent polls is from April 2001, when the Pew Research Center asked if Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh’s execution should be broadcast on television: 24 percent of respondents said yes, while 73 percent said no.
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Scott Clement contributed to this report.
