WASHINGTON — Opposition is mounting at home and abroad to the Pentagon’s plan to livestream the Dec. 3 firing-squad execution of Nidal Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, with House Speaker Mike Johnson, the European Commission and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese all raising objections, CNA, France 24 and ABC News (Australia) reported.
“The concern would be that you would create a video that would be a recruiting tool for future terrorists,” Johnson said in an interview broadcast Monday by CBS News, according to CNA. “We’ve got to think through the policy implications of all that.” Johnson said he would not watch the execution if it were aired. It would be the first U.S. military execution by firing squad since 1945, CNA said.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has defended the idea. “We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public,” he said. President Donald Trump has said a final decision on whether to broadcast the execution has yet to be made, and Vice President JD Vance has cast doubt on whether it will happen, ABC reported.
In Brussels, Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said platforms operating in Europe must enforce their own rules under the Digital Services Act. “If you look at some platforms, Meta explicitly forbids the live streaming of capital punishments, and X and TikTok both forbid … shocking content, glorifying violence,” he said, according to France 24. “No comment on what they do in the US but in Europe, we have clear obligations.”
In Canberra, Albanese said Tuesday his government would do “whatever it can” to stop the stream being seen in Australia. “I find the idea of live streaming the death of anybody completely abhorrent,” he told the ABC, adding that platforms have “a social responsibility here to do the right thing.” Australia’s eSafety Commission said it lacks the power to proactively block such a stream, and Foreign Minister Penny Wong told the Senate it would be “deeply distressing for any such vision to be live streamed.”
Sources: CNA, France 24, ABC News (Australia)
—
