WASHINGTON — The US Army will livestream the December 3 firing squad execution of Nidal Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people in a 2009 shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas, a Pentagon official said — an unprecedented move for the US military.

Mr. Hasan is set to become the first person executed by firing squad by the US military since 1945.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who championed the push to put Mr. Hasan before a firing squad, said earlier on Thursday on the Human Events Daily program, broadcast by Real America's Voice, that he planned to make the execution public. He did not say how.

"The Secretary is correct. It will be livestreamed. Details will follow," the Pentagon official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Mr. Hegseth said choosing to carry out the execution at Fort Hood on a Thursday at 1 pm — approximating the time, day of the week, and location of the 9 attack — was a "no brainer."

"We'll 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," Mr. Hegseth said.

Asked whether Mr. Hasan had made any final requests, Mr. Hegseth replied: "Don't care. We'll see him on December 3."

President Must Approve Firing Squad Execution

A military jury sentenced Mr. Hasan, who represented himself at the court-martial, to death in August 2013 after finding him guilty of 45 counts of premeditated murder and attempted premeditated murder for opening fire with a laser-sighted handgun inside a medical facility at the sprawling central Texas military base. The November 5, 2009, attack — the deadliest mass shooting at a US military installation — killed 13 people, including 12 soldiers and one civilian, and left more than 30 others wounded.

The attack came weeks before Mr. Hasan, then a major and now 56, was scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan. He was left partially paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair after being shot by police during his arrest. He has since been held on death row at the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Under US military law, a US president must approve an execution by firing squad. President Donald Trump did so on Mr. Hegseth's recommendation, the Pentagon disclosed on Monday.

"It hasn't been since World War Two since we've done that. Well, kind of like the mentality we had in World War Two," Mr. Hegseth said.

The White House declined to say whether Mr. Trump supports the livestreaming, referring questions to the Pentagon. How the broadcast will be conducted, and who will have access to it, has not been announced.

Death Penalty Action, a group that opposes capital punishment, said Mr. Hasan's execution would be the first military execution since 1961. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, that 1961 execution was carried out by hanging, while the last known executions by US military firing squad took place in 1945.

At least five states have firing squads on the books, according to the center. In 2025, South Carolina carried out the first such execution in the United States in 15 years.

Death by firing squad is among several forms of capital punishment the Trump administration recently added to the permissible methods of execution for the gravest federal crimes, along with electrocution and gas asphyxiation. The number of federal execution options was expanded in part because of increasing difficulties in obtaining drugs for lethal injections, which have also at times proved challenging to carry out.

Plans by the state of Tennessee to execute a woman for the first time in more than 200 years went awry last week when prison personnel botched attempts to administer a lethal injection, leaving death-row inmate Christa Pike alive but hospitalized. Her lawyers said on Wednesday that she awoke "angry and confused" in a hospital, where she remains very sick and shackled to her hospital bed.

— Reuters