Pentagon officials announced on Thursday that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army officer convicted in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, will be executed in public—a practice not used in the United States for nearly a century. The military execution is scheduled for Dec. 3 and will be broadcast via livestream, a move with little precedent in modern America. Hasan killed 13 people and wounded 32 others when he opened fire at Fort Hood, Texas, in the deadliest shooting ever at a U.S. military base. The announcement has drawn comparisons to public executions carried out by regimes in Iran, North Korea, and the Taliban-led government in Afghanistan, as well as videos released by extremist groups like the Islamic State.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth defended the public nature of the execution during an interview aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, stating that people need to understand there are serious consequences for such acts. The execution will be carried out by firing squad at Fort Hood, the site of the original shooting, and is scheduled for 1 p.m.—the same time as the 2009 attack. Hegseth emphasized the symbolic choice of date, time, and method, noting that the last U.S. public execution occurred in 1936 in Owensboro, Kentucky.
Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, admitted to the killings during his 2013 court-martial, where he was convicted on 45 counts of premeditated murder and attempted premeditated murder. He is currently held at the military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and expressed no remorse for his actions, telling a military mental health panel that he wished he had died in the attack so he could be a martyr.
Source: New York Times Top Stories · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing