USA: Bishops and UN criticize live broadcast of execution

The Catholic bishops of the United States have reacted with horror to the announcement of a live-streamed execution by the US military.

With regard to the shooting of an Islamist assassin scheduled for December 3rd, the bishops' conference chairman, Archbishop Paul Coakley, said: "I was shocked and with great sadness to learn of the War Ministry's decision to publicly broadcast the execution of Nidal Hasan live." Hasan's actions could in no way be condoned, said Coakley. "But this decision is the barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered." Such a public execution would "further undermine the moral fabric of our nation and ruin the conscience of its people," the archbishop warned.

UN: Public execution is torture

The United Nations has also criticized the planned livestream of the execution. "The live broadcast of an execution is tantamount to a public execution and would violate the absolute ban on torture," the office of the UN High Representative for Human Rights, Volker Türk, told the AFP news agency. According to the UN Convention against Torture, public executions constitute “a form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

US President Donald Trump only approved the firing squad for Hasan at the beginning of the week. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Thursday in a video interview with a right-wing influencer that the execution would take place in public. Hegseth said Hasan will get "a firing squad with soldiers (...), and we will make sure that people can watch, that it is public." When asked, a Pentagon employee confirmed that the execution would be “streamed live.”

Nidal Hasan, a former member of the US military, shot 13 people and injured dozens more at a base in Texas in 2009. The act, considered a terrorist attack, occurred a few weeks before a planned deployment to Afghanistan. Hasan, who described himself as a jihadist fighter, was sentenced to death in 2013. The shooting of the 56-year-old would be the first execution by the US military since 1961.

The legal basis for firing squads dates back to an 1879 Supreme Court decision. At that time, the judges unanimously ruled that an execution by firing squad was not “cruel and unusual punishment.” Firing squad executions are currently permitted in five states. Donald Trump said earlier this year that his administration would allow firing squads in the federal prison system.