Firing squad execution of 2009 Ft. Hood shooter to be livestreamed, Pentagon official says

Earlier this week, the Pentagon announced that Nidal Hasan, convicted in the 2009 mass shooting at Ft. Hood, would be executed by firing squad on December 3. Today, War Secretary Pete Hegseth stated that the execution would be public, “because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things”. A Pentagon official confirmed to Reuters that the execution would be livestreamed but gave no details about what platform would host this livestream.

If all this does come to pass, this would be the first public execution in the US since 1936, the first US military execution (by any method) since 1961, and the first US military execution by firing squad since 1945.

Hasan, formerly a US Army Major and a psychiatrist in the US Army Medical Corps, killed 13 of his fellow service members and wounded 32 others. He himself was left partially paralyzed and wheelchair-bound after a shootout with police as he fled the scene.

Who is Nidal Hasan?

Nidal Hasan, a Palestinian-American Muslim, served in the military for 21 years total. After completing a 4-year residency at Walter Reed in 2007, he began serving as a military psychiatrist. His superiors first became concerned about his state of mind during his residency when they noted he was increasingly disturbed by stories of soldiers he was treating about their service in Iraq and Afghanistan. They noted he was making “anti-American” statements but still allowed him to complete his residency.

In 2009, the same year he was transferred to Ft. Hood, Hasan initiated email contact with Anwar al-Awlaki, a Muslim cleric with whom he had previously been acquainted in Virginia. Al-Awlaki was noted for his radicalizing sermons. Most notably, he claimed that killing US soldiers and even Americans civilians was theologically permissible because America was waging a war on Muslims and Islam- a claim rejected by mainstream Muslim scholars and clerics.

These contacts, combined with Hasan’s own distress at his upcoming deployment to Afghanistan, seem to have fueled his decision to kill his fellow servicemembers on November 5, 2009. Hasan later stated that he considered himself a “mujahideen” engaged in Jihad against the US. He also expressed a desire to be executed because he believed it would make him a martyr.

In 2011, Anwar al-Awlaki (a US citizen) was killed in a drone strike in Yemen ordered by President Barack Obama. His 16-year-old son (also a US citizen) was killed three weeks later in another drone strike. Six year’s later, al-Awlaki’s 8-year-old daughter Nawar (also a US citizen) was killed in a raid by Seal Team 6 just days into Donald Trump’s first term as President. Since the actions that led Obama to order al-Awlaki’s killing were never adjudicated in court, his killing is considered by many legal and military scholars to be extrajudicial.