Firing squad execution of mass killer Nidal Hasan to be livestreamed, Pentagon says

The planned firing squad execution of an ex-US army psychiatrist who killed 13 people in Texas will be livestreamed, the Pentagon has said. 

US defence secretary Pete Hegseth said the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, which is set to take place on 3 December, will be "public".

"We'll make sure that people are able to watch it," Mr Hegseth told conservative TV outlet Real America's Voice News.

Pentagon officials later confirmed that the military execution will be livestreamed and that more details would follow.

US President Donald Trump had earlier this week approved the method of execution for Hasan, a former army major who was convicted of killing 13 people in a shooting spree at Fort Hood in 2009.

Hasan later claimed the attack was retaliation for US wars in the Middle East and to protect Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

The US military has not executed a service member by firing squad since the Second World War, Mr Hegseth said. The last time a US military execution took place was in April 1961, when Private John Bennett was hanged.

Death by firing squad was one of several forms of capital punishment recently added to permissible forms of execution by the Trump administration for the gravest of federal crimes.

This was in addition to electrocution and gas asphyxiation.

When asked if Hasan had made any final requests or reached out to the Trump administration, Mr Hegseth replied: "Don't care. We'll see him on December 3rd."

Four men, including Hasan, are currently on the military's death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

At least five states authorise firing squads as a method of execution. In 2025, South Carolina carried out the first such execution in the US in 15 years.

The number of federal execution options was expanded, in part, because of the increasing difficulties in obtaining drugs for lethal injections.

Decision to livestream 'extraordinary'

Sky's US correspondent David Blevins said people will be "very shocked" by the decision to livestream the execution, and that some will "find it almost medieval".

He said the US government is sending "a very clear message" and described the decision as "extraordinary, given that it comes with America's death penalty front and centre of debate following the botched execution of Christa Pike".

Last week, Pike, a Tennessee death row inmate, survived two doses of lethal injection in Nashville.

Lawyers for the 50-year-old said on Thursday that she had taken her first steps with assistance since waking up in hospital, having earlier revealed that she had spoken her first words.

They also said Pike was "angry and confused about everything right now", adding that she had been brain dead as recently as Monday.

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Pike, who was convicted of killing 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995, would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee for more than 200 years.

At a hearing on Wednesday, a judge granted a motion brought by Pike's legal team that requires the state to preserve relevant evidence from the botched execution.

Tennessee governor Bill Lee previously said an independent review was under way to determine what happened.

Earlier this week, Jamaal Howard, a Texas death row inmate convicted of fatally shooting a convenience store clerk in 2000, became the first person to be put to death in the US since Pike's attempted execution.

Howard, 46, was given pentobarbital, the same drug given to Pike, and his lawyers twice filed requests to stop the execution, arguing that the drug posed similar risks.

However, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied both requests without elaboration.

(c) Sky News 2026: Firing squad execution of mass killer Nidal Hasan to be livestreamed, Pentagon says