The Pentagon confirmed Nidal Malik Hasan’s firing-squad execution will be livestreamed December 3, the military’s first execution in more than sixty years.
A War Department official told Fox News Digital the death sentence will be carried out in public view. “It will be livestreamed. Details will follow,” the official said.
Hasan’s execution is set for December 3 at Fort Hood, Texas, the same post where the former Army major opened fire on unarmed soldiers and civilians on Nov. 5, 2009. He remains on military death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, until that date.
If the sentence is carried out, it will be the first U.S. military execution since 1961 and the first by firing squad since 1945. President Donald Trump approved the Army firing squad after War Secretary Pete Hegseth recommended it.
Hasan killed 13 people and wounded 32 others after shouting “Allahu Akbar” and spraying gunfire across Fort Hood. A military court convicted him in 2013 of 13 premeditated murders and 32 attempted murders and sentenced him to death.
For years the case sat on military death row. That delay ends on December 3. Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell put the moment in plain terms on X.
"Judgment day for Hasan has finally come."
The method is an Army firing squad. The New York Post reported the execution is scheduled for 1 p.m. at Fort Hood, carried out by soldiers with rifles, and will be livestreamed so the public can watch.
War Secretary Pete Hegseth has not treated the livestream as a side detail. He framed it as a warning.
"We’re gonna 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."
He also tied the location to the crime itself. “Army major betrays his country, radical Islamist kills a bunch of Americans at Fort Hood. Of course we’re doing it at Fort Hood,” Hegseth said.
That choice is deliberate. The government is not hiding the sentence on a remote range or behind closed doors. It is putting the consequence in the open, at the scene of the massacre, after a full conviction and a presidential approval of the firing-squad method.
Not everyone welcomes the camera. National Review argued against treating the death as public viewing material and urged prayer rather than a live audience. The piece asked whether the death of a human being should be turned into a show.
Hegseth’s answer runs the other way. He says the point is not entertainment. It is clarity. A soldier who murdered his fellow Americans faces a lawful sentence, and the country gets to see that the sentence is real.
Hasan’s victims were unarmed. They were on a U.S. Army post. He used their trust and his rank as cover, then opened fire. The 2013 conviction and death sentence answered that crime in court. The December 3 date answers it in fact.
The U.S. military has not executed anyone since 1961. It has not used a firing squad since 1945. Those gaps stretched across administrations of both parties while Hasan sat at Fort Leavenworth under a lawful death sentence.
Trump’s approval of the Army firing squad, on Hegseth’s recommendation, ends that stretch. The Pentagon’s livestream confirmation puts the final piece in public: the country will be able to see the sentence carried out.
Logistics past the basic facts remain thin. The War Department said details will follow. The platform, access rules, and exact feed arrangements were not spelled out in the initial confirmation. What is settled is the date, the place, the method, and the decision to make it viewable.
For the families of the 13 dead and the 32 wounded, the calendar finally has an endpoint. For the ranks who still serve at Fort Hood, the post that lived through the attack will also be the post that sees the sentence finished.
Justice that takes this long still has to land. When a terrorist in uniform murders American soldiers on their own base, the country is right to make the consequence visible, and final.
