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Nidal Hasan's firing squad execution set to be 'livestreamed' to the public
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The upcoming firing squad of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan is set to be ‘livestreamed’ to the public.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth yesterday confirmed his plan to have the military execution shown to the public, and he appears to have doubled down on those plans.
The US death penalty is a hot topic after Christa Pike debacle
After the recent botched execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee, the US death penalty is one of the hot topics of the day.
Pike, who was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, survived the lethal injection and is now recovering in hospital.
It remains to be seen whether she will have a second execution date or whether - as her lawyers have argued - she will have her sentence commuted to life without parole.
However, much of the scrutiny has been on the method of her execution, with lethal injection among the most controversial methods out there.
Slightly behind that is the firing squad.
However, that is the fate that Fort Hood terrorist murderer Nidal Hasan is set for.
Hasan killed 13 US soldiers at the Texas Armed Forces bases in 2009, and as a former Army Major and psychiatrist himself, he was sentenced to death after a military court-martial.
Yesterday, Hegseth announced the date and time of that execution, as well as saying that it would take place in ‘public’.
Hasan will be executed at 1:00pm local time on December 3 by a military firing squad.
Now, it has emerged that the US military plans to ‘livestream’ the execution.
In response to a story from CBS News reporting this, Hegseth simply posted: “Correct.”
Hasan set to face first military execution since 1961
This is set to be the first military execution since 1961, and the first to use a firing squad since the end of World War II in 1945.
The last time an execution took place publicly in the USA was in 1936, when Rainey Bethea was hanged for rape in Kentucky.
That execution brought a crowd of around 20,000 people.
The decision to execute Hasan in this manner has come after a long appeasl process, which finally led to Donald Trump approving the use of the firing squad at Hegseth’s request.
The former Army psychiatrist opened fire on an unarmed line of soldiers, killing 13 and injuring 32.
He openly admitted the shooting during his trial, claiming that he was acting in support of the Taliban government of Afghanistan.