Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan's firing squad execution will be livestreamed, Pentagon says

Fort Hood gunman Nidal Malik Hasan’s execution by firing squad will be streamed live, the Pentagon has confirmed.

The Associated Press reported Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as promising the public would be able to watch the execution on December 3, in an interview with the conservative Real America’s Voice News.

He said, “We'll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it's public.”

Asked if Hasan has made any final requests or otherwise contacted the Trump administration, Hegseth replied, “Don't care. We'll see him on December 3rd.”

The interview was conducted while Hegseth was aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, visiting a crew returning from deployment during the Iran war.

The Pentagon confirmed on Thursday that the execution would be livestreamed and further details would be issued.

The news comes after Trump signed off on the execution on Monday.

Hasan’s attack on a Texas base in 2009 left 13 people dead and 32 injured. The Army Major and psychologist was convicted in a military court.

He walked into a building where soldiers were lined up for immunisations and medical clearance before they were due to be deployed. Shouting “Allahu akbar” – Arabic for “God is great” he opened fire with a laser-sighted handgun.

Hasan was court-martialled in 2013 and found guilty of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 of attempted murder. Of those killed, 12 were soldiers and one was a civilian. Hasan was arrested after he was shot at the scene and has been held in detention at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Hegseth confirmed no US service member had been executed by firing squad since WW2, with the most recent military execution taking place in 1961, when Army Private John Bennett was hanged.

Trump has previously criticised the Iranian regime for the public execution of protesters, and has raised the issue as one of the reasons for taking military action against the Islamist regime.

"We've been told that the killing in Iran is stopping," Trump told reporters on 14 January. "It's stopping and there's no plan for executions."

He repeated the claim on 20 January: "We let them know that if that happens, that will be a very bad day for them. And they decided not to do it. They didn't hang the people."

A little over a month on, in his State of the Union address, he said: "We stopped them from hanging a lot of them with the threat of serious violence."