Pentagon Plan to Livestream Firing-Squad Execution Explained
U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth plans to livestream the execution of former U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan by Army firing squad.
The Pentagon says the execution will proceed by that method and will be broadcast live. AP Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist from Virginia, opened fire at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009. He admitted fatally shooting 13 people in a crowded medical building. The victims were unarmed soldiers. A court-martial, the military equivalent of a criminal trial, convicted him of killing 13 and wounding 32 others, and sentenced him to death.
The method has its own history. The planned shooting would be the first U.S. military execution by firing squad since 1945. Reuters No date for the execution has been disclosed in the verified reports. The plan was reported on Oct. 8 and Oct. 9, 2026. If carried out as described, the broadcast would be the first public execution in the United States in many decades. The practice was largely stopped in the 1930s. The Guardian
Comparison comes from international practice. Only two countries currently carry out capital sentences, or court-ordered death sentences, in public systematically: Iran and Afghanistan. In 2025, Taliban authorities carried out six public executions and Iran carried out 11, according to Amnesty International. In April 2025, the Taliban shot four men accused of murder in crowded sports stadiums in three different cities. Iranian authorities hanged two young men accused of killing policemen in the central square of Isfahan. Human rights monitors have reported about 30 public executions in Iran in the last five years. Beyond states, Islamic State, which ruled a swath of Iraq and Syria between 2014 and 2019, conducted thousands of executions for alleged offences ranging from homosexuality to theft. In Gaza, Hamas carried out a public execution of six men in October 2025 apparently accused of collaborating with Israel. In 2017, Hamas executed three men accused of collaborating with Israel and partly livestreamed the event on Facebook.
The broadcast element tests legal borders. New Zealand's censor said it would be powerless to block the livestream of the U.S. execution. Reuters
The broader context here is the collision between military punishment, public spectacle and transnational information controls. The questions are procedural and institutional. What authority governs approval and review of a military capital sentence carried out this way. What rules will govern cameras, distribution and access. How platforms and regulators in other jurisdictions will treat a state-produced feed of a killing. The precedent invoked is not domestic. It sits alongside practices the United States has routinely condemned in multilateral forums when carried out by Tehran, Kabul or nonstate armed groups. That tension could shape diplomatic reaction, press coverage and litigation, even before any date is set.
