Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the public will be able to see the Dec. 3 firing-squad execution of convicted Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan.
Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist and Islamic jihadist, was convicted of killing 13 people and wounding 32 others in a 2009 mass shooting at the sprawling military post in central Texas.
Mr. Hegseth recommended a firing squad as the means of execution, a decision that was approved by President Trump.
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“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public,” he told the conservative news website Human Events. “People need to understand that there are serious consequences for these types of things.”
The Defense Department said the execution would be live-streamed and that more details would follow.
Mr. Hegseth said the decision to recommend a firing squad as the means of execution was a “no-brainer,” and the choice of Fort Hood as the location for it was not a coincidence.
“Of course we’re going to do it at Fort Hood and do it on a Thursday. We’re going to do it at 10 a.m. — which is when he did it — and it’s going to be soldiers with rifles,” Mr. Hegseth said. “It was a radical Islamist attack in uniform inside the ranks, and so he’s going to get a firing squad of soldiers — as it should be.”
Mr. Hegseth was asked whether Hasan had made any requests or reached out to the White House since Mr. Trump approved the execution order.
“Don’t care. We’ll see him on Dec. 3,” he said.
Hasan’s execution would be the first since Army Pvt. and convicted child rapist John A. Bennett was hanged in 1961. It would be the first conducted by a military firing squad since Jan. 31, 1945, when Army Pvt. Eddie Slovik was shot for desertion during World War II near Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines in France.
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