Washington, Oct 15. (dpa/GNA) – The execution by firing squad of a former US Army psychiatrist, convicted of killing 13 at a military base in Texas, will not be livestreamed, President Donald Trump announced Thursday on his Truth Social platform.
Trump wrote that streaming the execution could be “a strong deterrent” for the world to see “how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like [Nidal] Hasan but, many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die.”
Hasan, who was convicted of carrying out a massacre at the Fort Hood military base in Texas in 2009, is scheduled to be executed on December 3 at the site of the attack. He was sentenced to death by a military court in 2013.
At his trial, Hasan said he had carried out the attack to protect Taliban members in Afghanistan from US troops. The administration has faced criticism after US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, announced the plan last week to livestream the execution.
Public executions by firing squad were used as a deterrent in the United States during the Civil War in the 19th century. The last execution of a service member by firing squad under the US military justice system took place in 1945.
The last fully public execution in the US was in 1936, when a man was hanged before thousands of spectators in Kentucky.
GNA