Hegseth: Execution of Fort Hood Shooter Will Be Public

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said the execution of Nidal Hasan, the former army psychiatrist convicted of the Fort Hood massacre, will be a public event when it takes place later this year. Officials later clarified that it will be livestreamed and that further details would follow, according to the Associated Press.

Speaking to Real America's Voice, Hegseth said a firing squad would carry out the sentence at Fort Hood, Texas, at 1pm on Thursday, 3 December. It would be the first US military execution in more than 60 years.

The attack and the sentence

Hasan opened fire at a medical processing center on the Texas base on 5 November 2009, killing 13 people and wounding dozens of others. A military jury sentenced him to death in 2013, and he has been held at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas since. He ran out of appeals last year, and this week Donald Trump approved the sentence on Hegseth's recommendation.

Investigators found that in the months before the attack Hasan had exchanged 18 emails with Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical cleric later killed in a US drone strike. At his court martial, Hasan said he acted to prevent American soldiers from deploying to Afghanistan to kill fellow Muslims, ahead of his own pending deployment. A review led by former FBI director William Webster concluded the bureau should have examined his correspondence more thoroughly.

Dispute over classification

In the interview, Hegseth said Barack Obama had called the attack "workplace violence". The Pentagon did initially classify the shooting as workplace violence rather than terrorism, which affected the victims' eligibility for Purple Hearts and other combat-related benefits. However, there is no record of Obama himself using the phrase. At a memorial days after the attack he described the victims as Americans who could not escape "the horror of war", called the shooting a tragedy and said the killer would face justice.

Firing squads

The last known US military firing squad was in November 1945, but the Trump administration has sought to revive the method in its second term to speed up capital cases. Five states allow it: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah. Amnesty International's latest annual review lists Afghanistan, China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen among countries still using firing squads.

Asked whether Hasan had made a final request or contacted Trump, Hegseth replied: "Don't care. We'll see him on December 3."