EEUU ejecutará públicamente a un exsoldado con un pelotón de fusilamiento

The U.S. military plans to publicly execute a former soldier who killed 13 people in Fort Hood, Texas in 2009. The Pentagon announced on Thursday that the hanging of the ex-soldier will take place at the end of the year, making the death sentence a public event. Pentagon spokesman Pete Hegseth confirmed that the execution will be carried out publicly, following an approval from President Donald Trump.

Hasan, a former Army major, shot soldiers in Fort Hood in 2009, killing 13 and injuring 32. The U.S. military has not used the firing squad as a method of execution since World War II, and its last death sentence was carried out by hanging in 1961. Capital punishment has become a focus in the U.S. after Tennessee's botched execution of Christa Pike in September, which resulted in her surviving two doses of the lethal injection pentobarbital.

The Pentagon's acting secretary, Adam Telle, said Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, would be executed at Fort Hood on December 3 at 1 p.m. Hegseth said the Pentagon will ensure the public can see it and that it must be public, as everyone needs to understand the severe consequences of such acts. If the Pentagon executes Hasan publicly, the U.S. will join a small group of countries, such as Iran, Afghanistan, and North Korea, that practice this method.

Soldiers in the firing squad will be used, which has not happened since World War II, Hegseth told Real America's Voice, a right-leaning television network. Hegseth described Fort Hood's mass shooting as a radical Islamist attack and added that the soldier will face a firing squad, as it should be. The Pentagon chose 1 p.m. on Thursday for Hasan's execution because it was when the attack occurred.

Hasan, an American-born Muslim, shouted "Allah Akbar" (God is great) during the massacre. During his military trial, where he defended himself, Hasan admitted that evidence proved he was the shooter and also claimed he switched sides against the U.S. due to Pentagon actions in the Middle East. Trump has long advocated for capital punishment and signed an executive order restoring the death penalty on the first day of his second term.

The Biden administration had imposed a moratorium on this practice, and former President Joe Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 of the 40 prisoners on death row in the last weeks of his presidency. Typically, executions in the U.S. are witnessed by a group of people that may include the condemned's family and attorney, as well as some media.

The U.S. Armed Forces have their own legal system, separate from the federal government. The last person to be executed was the bald soldier John Bennett, hanged in 1961 for violating and attempting to murder an Austrian girl six years earlier. Hasan is one of four prisoners on death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.