Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth drew accusations of breaching international law after stating plans to livestream the Army firing squad execution of Fort Hood terrorist Nidal Hasan, with critics likening it to ISIS tactics.
Hegseth spoke from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln on Thursday and told conservative influencer Jack Posobiec the execution would be made watchable. “We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public,” Hegseth said. He added, “People need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.”
The comments followed a Pentagon announcement on Monday that Hegseth had recommended death by Army firing squad for Hasan and that Donald Trump had approved it. It would mark the first military execution since 1961. Army rules require the sentence to be carried out within 150 days of the president’s approval.
Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, carried out an Islamist terror attack at the Texas base on November 5, 2009. He shot dead 12 soldiers and one civilian in what was described as the deadliest attack ever on a U.S. military installation. Police shot and paralyzed him during the rampage. In 2013 he was convicted on 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder.
The United Nations human rights office responded on Friday. It said broadcasting the killing “is tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture.” The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has long held that public executions “constitute a form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” the same position it has taken on Iran and Afghanistan.
Democratic Senator Chris Murphy learned of the livestream idea on Thursday night when CNN’s Erin Burnett told him on air. He said he was hearing it for the first time.
“What is he mimicking? ISIS executions.”
Murphy continued, “I understand that in this country we have the death penalty, but public executions is medieval,” and called it “one of the things that we abhor about terrorist groups.”
North Carolina Republican Senator Thom Tillis drew a similar line. He said Hasan should face the death penalty yet wrote that public executions are “what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do.” Tillis added, “It should not be happening in America,” and called streaming the death “beyond disgusting.”
Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff went further in comments to MS Now, calling the Defense Secretary “a deeply unwell person who seems to relish this kind of brutality” and accusing him of staging an “obscene medieval spectacle.” Ossoff also claimed Hegseth was “running a department that is falling into chaos” and said, “The guy cannot run the military competently.”
Those attacks arrive amid other pressure on Hegseth, including an impeachment push from within the GOP itself.
Hegseth has spent recent months under criticism for his handling of the Iran conflict. He was one of the few cabinet members who backed going to war with Iran in its earliest days. Tehran later managed to shut down traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway that carries one-fifth of the world’s oil.
Some Republicans have already shown caution. One recent example came when Sen. John Kennedy stopped short of full support.
The livestream dispute is the latest flashpoint. Hegseth’s stated goal was straightforward: show the public the cost of slaughtering American troops on their own base. Critics answered by invoking ISIS, medieval spectacles, and dictatorships.
Senate skepticism has appeared on other Hegseth initiatives too. Lawmakers earlier cooled to his plan to cut 20 percent of admirals and generals.
Reporting laid out the sequence from the Pentagon’s Monday announcement through Hegseth’s Thursday shipboard remarks and the Friday U.N. statement. No scheduled execution date inside the 150-day window has been released.
Trump’s approval of the firing squad method remains in place. Separate coverage has noted moments when the president shifted focus in Iran briefings, yet the death sentence decision itself stands.
Hegseth has also moved on personnel matters inside the building, including a decision that halted promotions of four Army officers. The Hasan case, however, turns on a simpler question: whether a convicted mass murderer of U.S. soldiers should die in public view so the country sees the price of that crime.
Thirteen Americans were murdered on a Texas Army base. The man who killed them is set for a firing squad. Making that judgment visible is not the scandal. Pretending the victims’ families owe the killer privacy is.
