Execution of Fort Hood Killer Nidal Hasan Will Be Public, Pete Hegseth Says

Nidal Hasan’s execution for a “radical Islamist terror attack” will be carried out in public, the secretary of defense said Thursday. The man responsible for the worst attack on a U.S. military base during peacetime will face a firing squad on December 3 at the same place, same time and same day of the week as his November 5, 2009, attack that killed 13 and injured 32 at Fort Hood, Texas. “We’ll make sure it is public, that people are able to watch it. People need to understand that there are serious consequences for these types of things,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told a Human Events Daily reporter on board the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. He did not specify whether the execution would be televised, live-streamed or made public in another way.The new commandant of the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Colonel Andrew Sergent, who was appointed to the post in August, received his orders to enforce the execution on Tuesday from the acting secretary of the Army, Adam Telle. President Trump authorized the use of the firing squad last Friday.“It hasn’t been since World War II that we’ve done this,” Mr. Hegseth said in videoed remarks. “Well, I kinda like the mentality we had back then which was win, when the enemy attacks you stand your ground.”Rules for Hasan’s execution are yet to be written, according to a Defense Department spokesman. They’ll be decided by Mr. Telle and Mr. Hegseth in the coming weeks.Previous procedures for executing a member of the military were last updated in 1959, just before the government’s last military execution, a hanging in 1961. The rules for “Execution by Musketry,” written in the procedural manual, call for an execution party to consist of an officer, eight men, and a sergeant, with the subject of the execution secured to a post erected for the purpose.Mr. Hegseth confirmed that soldiers will pull the trigger. “Remember what Obama called it, ‘workplace violence.’ Well it was a radical Islamist terror attack from inside the ranks,” the secretary said. “He’s going to get a firing squad of soldiers as it should be.”The existing rules say “eight rifles [are] to be loaded in his presence. At least one but no more than three will be loaded with blank ammunition,” reads the document dating from the Eisenhower administration. A chaplain and a medical officer are to be present.The prisoner will have time to make a final statement to the chaplain. With a black hood over his head and typically a white “four-inch round target” over his heart, the prisoner will hear the officer in charge say, “Ready. Aim. Fire,” at which time the eight men will discharge their weapons, a single shot each.Finally, the medical officer and the officer in charge will examine the prisoner. If he is still alive, the sergeant of the execution party will administer a coup de grȃce, a final pistol shot to the head, “holding the muzzle just above the ear and one foot from the head.”Similar procedures were last carried out when a convicted deserter, Army Private Eddie Slovik, was shot by a 12-man firing squad in France on January 31, 1945. Ten men were executed by the U.S. military by firing squad during World War II. Slovik was the only soldier executed for desertion since the Civil War, when firing squad executions were common.Mr. Hegseth said he doesn’t know if the convicted killer has made any final requests. “Don’t care.”

Execution of Fort Hood Killer Nidal Hasan Will Be Public, Pete Hegseth Says

Execution of Fort Hood Killer Nidal Hasan Will Be Public, Pete Hegseth Says

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