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The execution by firing squad of the perpetrator of the shooting at a US military base that left 13 dead will not be broadcast live, announced on Thursday the 13 dead
"He will die, as planned, by firing squad, but this event will not be broadcast," Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform, dismissing a plan by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth that had caused outrage.
The cancellation is a setback for the Pentagon chief, who is already under fire for the stalled war with Iran and its consequences, which are weighing down the Republican Party's chances in the upcoming November 3 mid-term legislative elections.
"The execution may be witnessed in person by the immediate family members of the victims, if they so wish," Trump added.
The decision to broadcast Nidal Hasan's execution live was widely rejected both inside and outside the country, sparking outrage among US Democratic and Republican politicians, the Catholic Church, human rights groups, and the United Nations.
The President of the United States indicated that he was not personally opposed to the plan to broadcast the execution, and stated that "it could have been a strong deterrent for the world to see how the United States treats terrorists and SCUM like Hasan."
But "many very good and well-intentioned people would prefer not to watch him die," Trump said.
Hasan's execution, scheduled for December 3 at Fort Hood, Texas, where he shot and killed 13 people in 2009, will be the first carried out by a US military firing squad since 1945.
- Equivalent to "torture" -
Hegseth had said last week that the government was going to ensure "that people can see it, that it be public."
"People have to understand that(...) there are serious consequences for this type of thing," he stated.
The United Nations said that broadcasting the execution would amount to "torture," while the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops called it a "barbaric promotion of a culture of death."
Vice President JD Vance, who recently published a book about his Catholic faith, said he would not watch the execution if the plan went forward.
A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll released Thursday found that eight out of ten Americans oppose broadcasting the execution live.
Legislators from both major US parties had expressed their opposition, including Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, who said it could become a "recruitment tool for future terrorists."
Dozens of retired US military officers also warned in an open letter against broadcasting the execution.
A live broadcast of the execution "will stain the honor of the armed forces that carry it out and of a nation that permits it," and "will ensure that Hasan becomes a martyr for attacking and killing his own comrades in arms," said the officers, including more than 40 generals and admirals.
The last military execution in the United States was carried out in 1961, when John Bennett was hanged for rape and attempted murder.
The Death Penalty Information Center notes that 135 military personnel have been executed by the US armed forces since 1916.
According to the human rights organization Amnesty International, at least 17 public executions are known to have been carried out in 2025: six in Afghanistan and 11 in Iran.
Twelve of the 13 people Hasan killed and 30 of those he wounded were soldiers.
He was shot by a civilian police officer who responded to the attack and is paralyzed from the waist down.
Hasan was sentenced to death by a military jury in 2013.
Hasan claimed he opposed US military occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan and that he had communicated online with an alleged Al Qaeda figure, the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen who was later killed in a US drone strike in Yemen.
[Publicidad]