Firing squad execution of mass killer will not be livestreamed, Trump says

The firing squad execution of an ex-US army psychiatrist who killed 13 people on a military base will not be livestreamed, Donald Trump has said.

US defence secretary Pete Hegseth previously said the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, which is set to take place on 3 December, would be "public".

But in a post today on his social network, Truth Social, on Thursday, Mr Trump said the livestream would no longer go ahead.

He wrote: "I think streaming the execution for all to see might have been a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan but, many very good and well-meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device."

He added: "He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed."

Some of Mr Trump's fellow Republicans, including Vice President JD ​Vance, as ​well as ⁠religious leaders and international observers, had expressed doubts about the Pentagon's plan to ​livestream the execution.

Recent polls have also shown that a majority of Americans were against it.

Hasan, a former US army psychiatrist, ⁠was ​found guilty in a military ​trial of fatally shooting 13 people at Fort Hood in Texas ​in 2009.

He walked into a medical building and shouted "Allahu akbar" - Arabic for "God is great!" - before firing shots using a laser-sighted handgun.

Hasan also shot at the backs of soldiers fleeing towards the car park.

He later said it was an attempt to stop them from going to Afghanistan and killing his fellow Muslims.

Hasan was left paralysed from the waist down after being shot in the back by officers responding to the attack, and he now uses a wheelchair.

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When asked about the planned execution earlier this month, Mr Vance said: "I don't know that that's actually going to happen."

He said that "if it's ultimately livestreamed, I'm not going to be watching it".

The families of Hasan's victims will be able to watch the ​execution in person if they want to, as is standard at US executions.

The US military hasn't held a firing squad execution for a service member since the Second World War.

The last time it carried out a military execution was in April 1961, when Private John Bennett was hanged for the rape and attempted murder of an Austrian girl.

Death by firing squad was one of several forms of capital punishment recently added to permissible forms of execution by the Trump administration, in addition to electrocution and gas asphyxiation.

Capital punishment in the US has faced renewed scrutiny after Christa Pike, convicted of murder in the 1990s, ​survived a botched execution attempt in Tennessee two weeks ago that left her badly injured.

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