Lawmakers Slam Pentagon Plan to Broadcast Nidal Hasan Execution Live

Barbaric is how some describe the Pentagon's new plan to broadcast Nidal Hasan's execution online. Lawmakers from both parties are slamming Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth for this move. The target is a former soldier who killed 13 people at a base in Texas back in 2009.

Hegseth told a conservative news outlet on Thursday that the firing squad event would be made public. He gave a specific time: December 3 at 1pm local time, which matches the hour of the original attack. That is 19:00 GMT. The location remains the military base where the tragedy started.

Reaction was immediate and fierce in Congress. Thom Tillis, a Republican Senator, posted on social media that Hasan deserved the death penalty but not a public broadcast. He called the idea disgusting. "Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do," Tillis wrote. "It should not be happening in America."

Austin Scott, another Republican serving in the House Armed Services Committee from Georgia, took a similar stance on X. "I absolutely support the sentence of death, but live-streaming executions is what jihadists do," he said. "America is better than that." His colleague Rob Bresnahan agreed. "The focus should be on justice for the victims and their families," Bresnahan stated. "Their pain deserves respect, not a public show."

Susan Collins, Mitch McConnell, and Lisa Murkowski are three Republican senators who opposed Hegseth's confirmation. Al Jazeera has not received a response from them yet regarding this specific issue.

Hasan faced his fate after a military jury convicted him in August 2013. The charges included 45 counts of premeditated murder and attempted murder. President Donald Trump authorized the firing squad on Monday following previous appeals for lethal injection.

Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee from Rhode Island, asked the administration to reconsider Friday. He told Al Jazeera that live-streaming an execution is a barbaric spectacle. This, he argued, acts as a gift to anti-American terrorist recruiters. "This is yet another stunt by Secretary Hegseth to distract from his tenure's repeated failings which have only weakened our national security and standing in the world," Reed said in a statement. He added that the action is shameful and damaging to America's interests and core values.

Chris Murphy, a fellow Democrat from Connecticut, looked visibly shocked during a CNN interview on Thursday. "That's disgusting," he told Erin Burnett. "Is he mimicking ISIS [ISIL] executions? I understand that, in this country, we have the death penalty, but public executions [are] medieval." He rolled his eyes at the suggestion.

Not everyone shares this outrage though. Andy Ogles, a Republican Congressman from Tennessee, said on social media that a public execution is what this terrorist deserves. He called Hegseth's decision excellent.

JD Vance, the US Vice President and former Marine Corps member, visited Ohio on Friday to speak with reporters. He said he would not be watching the livestream. "I see these announcements," Vance told them. "I don't know that that's actually going to happen.

Let's sort of see … when he's executed."

US Army rules strictly limit who can watch military executions. A regulation from the branch bars anyone under 18 from seeing the event. Only a handful of people are allowed inside. Victims, their families, the prisoner's lawyer, and at least two news reporters fit this narrow list.

For Hasan's execution to be "public", Reed said Trump would have to approve a waiver. The White House stayed silent when asked if the president would give the Defense Department that permission. It did not answer.

Brendan Carr, head of the US Federal Communications Commission, spoke up on Friday. He regulates broadcast communications across the country. Carr said he would defer to the Pentagon on whether networks could air the execution. "Ultimately, we're going to defer to Secretary Hegseth and, you know, his decisions on how to move forward with this," Carr told CNBC.

An official at the Defense Department told Al Jazeera that the agency has "nothing additional to provide". The United Nations took a hard stance against it. It strongly condemned the livestreaming of Hasan's execution. They stated it would breach international law. A spokesperson for the UN human rights office explained this to AFP. Broadcasting the event would be "tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture".