Livestreaming the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter amounts to 'torture', says UN

LAST UPDATE | 7 hrs ago

A DECISION BY US officials to livestream the execution of convicted killer Nidal Hasan would amount to torture, the United Nations said.

Hasan, a US Army psychiatrist, shot dead 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009. A Pentagon official said his execution by firing squad in December will be livestreamed, after Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said it would be carried out in “public”.

His execution will be the first by the US military since 1961, and the first it has carried out by firing squad since World War II. The execution is to take place at Fort Hood in Texas. 

In a message sent to news agency AFP, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said: “The livestreaming of an execution is tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture.”

The UN body said it had made similar statements about public executions in Afghanistan and Iran, saying they “constitute a form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.

Hegseth had said in a video posted on X by official Pentagon accounts earlier on Thursday that Hasan is “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.”

“People need to understand that…there’s serious consequence for these types of things,” Hegseth told influencer Jack Posobiec while aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier.

Hegseth noted that it would be the military’s first firing squad execution since the Second World War – a reference to the case of Eddie Slovik, who was put to death for desertion in 1945.

“I kind of like the mentality we had in World War II, which was win, which was understand when the enemy attacks you, you need to stand your ground,” Hegseth said.

In a separate clip, Posobiec asked the Pentagon chief if Hasan had made any final request.

“Don’t care. We’ll see him on 3 December,” Hegseth said, the day Hasan is slated to die.

The last US military execution was carried out in 1961, when John Bennett was hanged for rape and attempted murder.

Afghanistan and Iran

According to rights group Amnesty International, at least 17 public executions are known to have been carried out in 2025, six in Afghanistan and 11 in Iran.

The Death Penalty Information Center says that 135 soldiers have been executed by the US military since 1916.

The Pentagon announced earlier this week that US President Donald Trump had approved Hasan’s execution for carrying out the Al-Qaeda inspired attack.

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Twelve of those he killed 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.

Hasan chose to conduct his own defence during the trial but called no witnesses and gave no testimony, and made no attempt to deny the charges. Court-appointed defence attorneys expressed concern that he was seeking execution.

The court that convicted Hasan was told 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.

His execution is the tenth scheduled for military veterans this year. Nine more people on death row are due to be executed this year, all by lethal injection.

What is a public execution? 

A public execution is the killing of a person convicted of a crime by the State. It is classed as an event in which the general public are permitted to voluntarily attend. 

In the case of Hasan, the ‘public’ element will take the form of a livestream, although it is unknown whether this will be through television or social media platforms.

Public executions are incredibly rare in the Western world. In 2025, at least 17 public executions were known to have been carried out internationally, Amnesty International said, in Afghanistan and Iran.

It was previously noted by Amnesty that public executions are understood to be carried out in North Korea to serve as an example to others, although the nation is notoriously secretive about its conduct.

In 2008, North Korea carried out the public executions of 15 people who had attempted to flee to China, “apparently as an example to deter others”, the organisation said.

The US was the only country in the Americas and Europe to carry out executions last year, killing 47 people on death row. It was its highest number of executions since 2009.

When was the last public execution in the US?

The 1936 hanging of Rainey Bethea in a car park in Ownesboro, Kentucky is considered the last public execution in the US.

Bethea was hanged after he confessed to the rape and murder of 70-year-old Lishia Edwards. Reportedly 20,000 people flooded into the town to watch the execution, with media at the time describing the atmosphere as feverish and moblike, akin to a carnival. Some people camped out overnight by the gallows, and vendors sold popcorn and bottles of cold coke.

The portrayal of the event in the national press at the time angered many residents and the town moved away from public hangings.

In more modern times, the 2001 execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was made available to view by a number of survivors and relatives of his victims.

McVeigh, who was responsible for the bombing that killed 168 people in 1995, was executed by lethal injection. A small portion of those eligible to watch his execution elected to do so.

Additional reporting by AFP