Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday the public would be able to watch the firing squad execution of a former Army officer convicted of a mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas.
Speaking from the USS Abraham Lincoln to the conservative news outlet Real America’s Voice, Hegseth said Nidal Hasan is “going to get a firing squad of soldiers, and we’ll make sure that people are able to watch it.”
“People need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” said Hegseth, who called the method of execution a “no-brainer.”
Hegseth said the execution would be carried out at 1 p.m. Dec. 3 at Fort Hood — same day of the week and time of day as Hasan’s attack.
The execution will be livestreamed, according to a Defense Department official, though it’s not yet clear on which platform.
The last military execution was in 1961, when Army Pvt. John Bennett was hanged after he was convicted of raping and attempting to kill an 11-year-old girl in Austria.
The last firing squad execution by the military was that of Pvt. Eddie Slovik in 1945 after he was court-martialed for desertion during World War II.
Hasan was convicted of premeditated murder in 2013 through the Army court system and sentenced to death.
Hasan, a former major and psychiatrist, opened fire at Fort Hood on Nov. 5, 2009, killing 13 people and wounding 32 others while shouting “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great” in Arabic.
He was paralyzed from the waist down after he was shot during the attack, and he later told a panel of military mental health professionals that he wished he had been killed because it would have made him a martyr for his cause. He also said that if he were executed, he would still be considered a martyr.
NBC News reported this week that the firing squad idea was set in motion this year inside the Pentagon, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the planning.
President Donald Trump recently approved Hegseth’s recommendation to carry it out, chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said on social media.
In his interview with Real America’s Voice, Hegseth was asked if he knew whether Hasan had contacted Trump or made any final requests.
“Don’t care,” Hegseth said. “We’ll see him on Dec. 3rd.”
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, after a president approves the death sentence from a case in a military court, the service member can seek habeas relief from the federal court system.
If the habeas petition is ultimately denied, the servicemember, according to the center, would be led from death row down a flight of stairs to the United States Disciplinary Barracks’s death chamber where the servicemember would — traditionally — be strapped to a gurney and executed by lethal injection. The Defense Department, however, has said Hasan will be executed by firing squad.
Hasan has represented himself throughout the yearslong legal process, though he had two lawyers with the U.S. Army Trial Defense Service who assisted as needed. It’s not clear at the moment whether he will appeal his method of execution.
