The Pentagon announced last week that Nidal Hasan, who was sentenced to death in 2013 for the attack on a U.S. Army base in 2009, will be executed by firing squad in an unprecedented live-streamed operation on December 3. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, who had pushed for the use of a firing squad, said the public execution was to make people “understand that there are serious consequences” for their actions. While firing squads are legal for executions in the country, the move to make it public and broadcast it has drawn criticism from activists, lawmakers across party lines, other nations, and international organisations alike for its “barbaric” nature and symbolism linked to autocracy and anarchy.

Why was Nidal Hasan sentenced to death?

Hasan, 56, is a former Major in the U.S. Army and a psychiatrist and is convicted of killing 12 soldiers and a civilian and injuring more than 30 after he opened fire with a handgun on troops waiting for deployment details at the Fort Hood base in Texas in 2009. He was shot by a police officer trying to restrain him and was left partially paralysed in a wheelchair. Considered one of the biggest non-war attacks on U.S. military infrastructure, reports have linked Hasan’s motives to mental health issues, Islamist Jihad, and opposition to the draft. He is charged with dozens of counts of premeditated murder and attempted murder, with the terrorism angle being dropped. He was court-martialed, convicted, and sentenced to death in 2013. After his possibilities of appeals in the military system were extinguished, U.S. President Donald Trump signed off on the execution earlier this month. Legal experts have said that Hasan can still move against the capital punishment in civilian federal courts, which could take years to close.

What are the legal provisions for capital punishment and firing squad?

When facing the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia famously remembered being taken by his father to discover ice. Firing squads have long been part of military establishments and have a place in public imagery, along with the guillotine, after being romanticised by the likes of Márquez and Sartre.

An execution by firing squad, as the name suggests, will have multiple gunmen fire at the convict. The number of shooters can vary, and some will even have empty shells loaded in their guns so that the one who made the fatal shot can remain unknown.

Capital punishments are always contested in democratic systems, with conflicting perspectives on morality and justice making them subjective. Many countries, including the U.K., France, and Italy, have abolished the death penalty for all crimes, while several others have made it subject to stringent scrutiny. Under pressure from civil rights groups over discriminatory elements in death sentences in the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1972 that the death penalty is unconstitutional when imposed in an “arbitrary and capricious manner”. This ruling made existing provisions for capital punishment in States unconstitutional and spared hundreds of prisoners on death row. However, States updated their statutes to comply with the ruling, and the Supreme Court upheld the updated provisions in 1976. Different States use different methods for execution, like gas chambers, electric chairs, lethal injections, and firing squads. The U.S. Supreme Court made a unanimous decision in 1879 that execution by firing squad does not fall under “cruel and unusual punishments” prohibited by the Constitution. Currently, five U.S. States — Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Utah, and South Carolina — and the U.S. military allow execution by firing squad.

The U.S. Army has used firing squads for executions regularly in the 19th century, with hundreds of soldiers facing the guns during the Civil War. Hasan’s execution would be the first since the Second World War that the U.S. Army employed a firing squad to carry out a sentence. In 1945, Army private Eddie Slovik was executed by firing squad for desertion. The last U.S. military execution of any kind took place in 1961, when private John Bennett was hanged after being convicted of rape and attempt to murder of a minor.

The President’s nod for Hasan’s execution, as required by law for military personnel under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, comes at a time when methods of execution are being debated again in the country. The most common method, lethal injection, has been botched on several occasions, including the recent Christa Pike incident. In South Carolina, where people sentenced to death can choose from execution, lethal injection, and firing squad, convicted murderer Brad Sigmon in 2025 chose the guns after the previous three executions in the State saw the convicts endure prolonged suffering before death.

Can executions be public events?

A U.S. law prohibits recording or broadcasting of executions in federal prisons, but military cases do not fall under this provision. States regulate who witnesses executions, and they are mostly limited to authorised officials, lawyers, family members, and select media representatives. Sporadic attempts have been made to make executions pubic, but all of them were turned down by courts. In 2001, a request to livestream the execution by lethal injection of Timothy McVeigh, convicted for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, was denied by a court, but the procedure was shown to survivors of the attack and family members of the victims through CCTV.

What are the reservations against livestreaming the execution?

From the Salem witch hunts to ‘stonings’ under Sharia law, several countries and cultures have public executions to, in Mr. Hegseth’s words, let people know the consequences of their actions. However, such events have no place in the modern world, and several U.S. lawmakers have flagged the proposal to broadcast Hasan’s execution as a barbaric act. U.S. Vice-President J.D. Vance, a practising and public Catholic, when asked by the media about the Pentagon’s proposal, said that he would not watch the execution if it is broadcast.

The UN has condemned the Pentagon’s announcement, saying that a livestream of the execution is an inhumane form of punishment that violates the ‘Convention Against Torture’, a 1984 treaty. However, the treaty, like several other international agreements, is not enforceable in the U.S. “The livestreaming of an execution is tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture,” the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Friday (October 9, 2026).

Adam Smith, a Democrat and member of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, said the plan was “disturbing and makes a mockery of our legal system”, while Senator Chris Murphy described public executions as “medieval”. Republican senator Thom Tillis said that broadcasting the execution was “beyond disgusting”, arguing that public executions were associated with oppressive regimes. Some have also pointed to livestreamed executions by terrorist groups like the Islamic State and al-Qaeda to say that broadcasting Hasan’s death and making it a spectacle might prove counterproductive, giving extremists ammo to radicalise people.

Published – October 13, 2026 10:09 am IST