United States to broadcast first military execution by firing squad since Second World War

The execution, scheduled for 3 December, will be the first carried out by the US armed forces since 1961, and the first to be carried out by a firing squad since the Second World War.

The US Secretary of Defence, Pete Hegseth, stated that the execution would be "public". And "it will be broadcast live. Further details will be provided," said a Pentagon official.

Hegseth told right-wing ‘influencer’ and activist Jack Posobiec that a firing squad would be responsible for carrying out the death sentence. “He will be executed by a firing squad of soldiers, as is only right and we will ensure that people can witness it, that it is public,” Hegseth stated in a video shared on X by several official Pentagon accounts.

In a separate video, Posobiec asked the head of the Pentagon whether Hasan had made any final requests. “I don’t care. We’ll see on 3 December,” he said.

The last military execution in the United States took place in 1961, when John Bennett was hanged for rape and attempted murder.

According to the human rights organisation Amnesty International, there are records of at least 17 public executions carried out in 2025: six in Afghanistan and eleven in Iran.

According to the NGO Death Penalty Information Centre, 135 soldiers have been executed by the US military since 1916.

The Pentagon announced earlier this week that President Donald Trump had approved Hasan’s execution for carrying out an attack inspired by Al-Qaeda.

Twelve of those killed and 30 of those injured were soldiers. Hasan was shot by a civilian police officer and was left partially paralysed.

He was sentenced to death by a military jury in 2013. Hasan acted as his own defence counsel during the trial, but did not call any witnesses, make a statement or attempt to contest the charges.

The court-appointed defence lawyers believed that the former psychiatrist was seeking the death penalty. The court that convicted him was informed that he opposed the US military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

It was also revealed that Hasan had spoken to a suspected Al-Qaeda figure, the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Of Yemeni origin and a US citizen, al-Awlaki was killed in a US drone strike in Yemen.

Although mass shootings are common in the United States, they are relatively rare on military bases. In 2025, a soldier opened fire at a base in the state of Georgia, injuring five soldiers before he was apprehended. In 2019, a US Marine shot and killed two people and injured a third at a base in Hawaii.