Pentagon announces live webcast of Fort Hood shooter's execution, UN human rights office denounces it as 'tantamount to public execution'

The Pentagon announced on Thursday that on December 3 it would execute Nidal Malik Hasan — the perpetrator of the 2009 mass shooting — by firing squad at Fort Hood military base in Texas, with the entire process webcast live. According to France 24 and Agence France-Presse, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a statement via AFP the following day warning: "Webcasting an execution is tantamount to a public execution and would violate the absolute prohibition on torture."

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made the announcement while aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln — which had not yet arrived at its home port in San Diego — as he visited sailors returning from an extended deployment. Notably, those sailors had participated in U.S. military operations against Iran. Hegseth said the execution would be open to the public, "we will make sure people can see it, it will be public." Asked whether Hasan had made any last requests or reached out to the Trump administration, Hegseth's response was brief and non-negotiable: "Don't care. We'll see him December 3."

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell had stated on Monday that President Trump had approved the execution order for Hasan. Hasan was an Army psychiatrist holding the rank of major. In November 2009, he walked into a medical building at Fort Hood — where soldiers were lining up for vaccinations and pre-deployment physicals — shouted the Arabic phrase "Allahu akbar," and opened fire with a pistol equipped with a laser sight. Investigators recovered 146 shell casings within the building and dozens more outside, where Hasan had shot at them from the back as they ran toward the parking lot. Soldiers testified that his near-mechanical, high-speed reloading made stopping the shooting almost impossible. Hasan mounted almost no defense at trial, describing himself as a soldier who had "switched sides," while the military judge barred him from presenting to the jury the argument of "preventing soldiers from going to Afghanistan to kill Muslim brothers." A military court that year found Hasan guilty of killing 13 people and wounding 32 in the shooting, convicted him and sentenced him to death.

Hegseth also noted that the U.S. military had not executed any service member by firing squad since World War II; the previous military execution had taken place on April 13, 1961, when Army Private First Class John Bennett was hanged.

The OHCHR statement also noted that the office had made similar comments regarding public executions in Afghanistan and Iran, describing them as "constituting cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." The statement was issued only in the form of a letter to AFP and does not constitute a binding legal ruling.

The political context makes the Pentagon's arrangement particularly difficult to sidestep: Trump has repeatedly cited the possibility of Iran "hanging protesters" as a justification for potentially using military force against the country. On January 14 this year, he told reporters, "we've been told the killing has stopped and there are no execution plans"; on January 20, at a White House press conference, he claimed again, "if they hang those people, it's going to be a very bad day for them," and said Iran "decided not to do that, they didn't hang those people"; in his State of the Union address more than a month later, he went further, claiming "we stopped them from hanging many of them with the threat of severe violence." These statements came before he decided at the end of February to use military force against Iran over ballistic missile and nuclear weapons risks. At a moment when the U.S. government threatened "severe violence" to prevent another country from carrying out executions, the Pentagon is now planning to present one of its own executions to the world with maximum visibility.

The relevant legal proceedings remain subject to change. Prior AFP reporting noted that Hasan had for years maintained that his client suffered from mental illness. Military law expert and Yale Law School visiting lecturer Eugene Fidell pointed out that Hasan could seek to file a habeas corpus petition through a civilian court to delay the execution, "frankly this could extend beyond this administration, who knows if the next administration will have the same appetite for execution."