“It’s the Middle Ages”: outrage in the United States after the announcement of a public execution broadcast live

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He was a soldier when he killed 13 of his colleagues in 2009 on the Fort Hood base in Texas. Nidal Hasan will be put to death at the very scene of his crime, shot by American soldiers. The execution will be public and even broadcast live on the Internet.

This is the assumed will of the Trump administration. “It was a radical Islamist attack by a soldier in our ranks. So, it will be a firing squad by soldiers, as it should be,” explains Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense, Friday October 9. “And we will make sure that people can watch, that it is public, because people must understand that there are consequences to doing this kind of thing,” he adds.

A method close to “dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan”?

The last U.S. military firing squad was during World War II. As for a public killing, this has not happened in the United States since 1936. Donald Trump is making it a campaign argument, the symbol of a strong America: "We are going to administer final justice to a diabolical killer, the Fort Hood shooter." On television, the daughter of a victim of the attack said uneasily: "The firing squad is strange to me. I don't really understand. It makes a spectacle of it and it only gives the killer an importance that is not necessary."

Criticism is mounting in the United States. The Democrats are rebelling. "A public execution is the Middle Ages. And it's one of the things that we horrify about, among terrorist groups. Do we really want our children to see that?" denounces Chris Murphy, senator. Even Republicans, in favor of the death penalty, are indignant. “This is beyond disgusting. Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. This should not happen in America,” Senator Thom Tillis wrote on the social network X.

The UN denounces a form of torture. The firing squad is scheduled for December 3, but it can be challenged in court before then. A new controversy after the fiasco of the botched execution of Christa Pike, ten days earlier. Lethal injections didn't work.