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WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump cast doubt Friday on whether authorities will livestream the firing squad execution of the perpetrator of a deadly attack on American soldiers, a plan that has drawn broad and bipartisan condemnation.<\/strong><\/p>\n Nidal Hasan\u2019s execution \u2014 scheduled for December 3 at Fort Hood, Texas, where he gunned down 13 people in 2009 \u2014 is set to be the first by a US military firing squad since 1945.<\/p>\n A Pentagon official told AFP on Thursday that the execution would be streamed live, after US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said \u201cwe\u2019ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it\u2019s public.\u201d<\/p>\n But Trump, who supports the death penalty in this case, left uncertain whether the execution would be publicly broadcast.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are making a determination about that, but he will be killed,\u201d Trump said. \u201cI really don\u2019t care how he goes, as long as he goes.\u201d<\/p>\n Earlier Friday, Vice President JD Vance told journalists who asked about the planned livestream that he does not \u201cknow that that\u2019s actually going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a guy who committed, in my view, the worst terrorist attack on American soil outside of 9\/11,\u201d Vance said, but added that if the execution is broadcast live, \u201cI\u2019m not going to be watching it.\u201d<\/p>\n Representative Austin Scott of Trump\u2019s Republican Party said he supported executing Hasan but \u201clivestreaming executions is what jihadists do. America is better than that.\u201d<\/p>\n Senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Hasan should \u201cface justice\u201d but that public executions are \u201cthe kind of thing Iran and the Taliban do. Is this who we want to be associated with?\u201d<\/p>\n Tech firms YouTube, Meta and X did not immediately respond to requests for comment on whether they would allow the execution to be streamed on their platforms.<\/p>\n TikTok directed AFP to its policy banning depictions of \u201cgraphic incidents and violence\u201d including \u201cthe shooting of an individual.\u201d<\/p>\n The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights condemned the plan, saying in a message sent to AFP on Friday that \u201cthe livestreaming of an execution is tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture.\u201d<\/p>\n Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, said it was a \u201cbarbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Compound the cruelty\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Hegseth said it would be the military\u2019s first firing squad execution since World War II.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople need to understand that\u2026there\u2019s serious consequence for these types of things,\u201d Hegseth said in a video shared Thursday on official Pentagon X accounts.<\/p>\n The last US military execution was carried out in 1961, when John Bennett was hanged for rape and attempted murder.<\/p>\n The Death Penalty Information Center says 135 troops have been executed by the US military since 1916.<\/p>\n According to rights group Amnesty International, at least 17 public executions are known to have been carried out in 2025 \u2014 six in Afghanistan and 11 in Iran.<\/p>\n Amnesty\u2019s Justin Mazzola said Friday that the death penalty is \u201ca violation of human rights,\u201d and that streaming Hasan\u2019s execution \u201cwould only compound the cruelty.\u201d<\/p>\n Twelve of the 13 people Hasan killed and 30 of those he wounded were soldiers. He was shot by a civilian police officer who responded to the attack and is paralyzed from the waist down.<\/p>\n Hasan chose to conduct his own defense during the trial but called no witnesses and gave no testimony, and made no attempt to deny the charges.<\/p>\n He was sentenced to death by a military jury in 2013.<\/p>\n Court-appointed defense attorneys expressed concern that he was seeking execution.<\/p>\n The court that convicted Hasan was told he was opposed to the US military\u2019s occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and that he had spoken online with an alleged Al-Qaeda figure, radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen subsequently killed in a US drone strike in Yemen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n