Pete Hegseth says Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan will face public firing squad

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has announced that the military execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan will be open to the public when it is carried out by firing squad this December.

Speaking in an interview with the media outlet Human Events on Thursday, Hegseth said the Pentagon would ensure the public can witness the punishment at Fort Hood in Texas.

"We'll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it's public, because people need to understand that... there's serious consequences for these types of things," Hegseth said.

The decision marks a major departure from modern federal and military capital punishment policies, which historically restrict execution chambers to a small number of official witnesses, victims' families, and selected journalists.

Hasan, a former US Army psychiatrist, was sentenced to death by a military court for the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood that left 13 people dead and dozens of others injured. He has spent years on military death row while his case moved through the appeals process.

Under military law, a service member cannot be executed without the formal approval of the US president. Hegseth’s announcement signals that the administration is moving forward with the final phase of the sentence.

How the public will actually view the execution remains unresolved. Hegseth did not clarify whether the event would be broadcast live on television, streamed online, or restricted to a public gallery at the military base. The Department of Defence has not yet published specific protocols for managing what would be the first public execution by the US government in decades.

The choice of a firing squad is also highly unusual. While some US states have recently reintroduced the firing squad as an alternative to lethal injection, it is exceptionally rare in contemporary military history. The US military has not carried out an execution of any kind since 1961.

The decision is likely to face immediate challenges from Hasan’s defence lawyers, who have spent more than a decade appealing his conviction. Legal experts suggest that a public execution by firing squad could trigger intense litigation over whether the broadcast or public staging of a death sentence violates constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment.