Pete Hegseth accused of violating international law and compared to ISIS over Fort Hood killer’s livestreamed execution
Pete Hegseth has been accused of breaching international law and compared to ISIS over his plan to livestream the execution of Fort Hood gunman Nidal Hasan.
The UN human rights office said on Friday that broadcasting the killing ‘is tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture.’
Democratic Senator Chris Murphy went further, asking on live television: ‘What is he mimicking? ISIS executions.’
The backlash crossed party lines, with Republican Senator Thom Tillis declaring that public executions are ‘what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do.’
‘It should not be happening in America,’ the North Carolina senator wrote on X late Thursday, adding that streaming the death was ‘beyond disgusting.’
Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff told MS Now on Thursday night that the Defense Secretary is ‘a deeply unwell person who seems to relish this kind of brutality.’
Hegseth revealed the plan while speaking from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln to conservative influencer Jack Posobiec on Real America’s Voice on Thursday.
‘We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public,’ he said, adding: ‘People need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.’
The UN human rights office said on Friday that broadcasting the killing ‘is tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture’
Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, shot dead 12 soldiers and one civilian at the Texas base on November 5, 2009, in the deadliest attack ever carried out on a US military installation
His standing inside Trump’s inner circle has only grown in recent months, as Hegseth was one of the few cabinet members to back going to war with Iran in its earliest days.
Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, shot dead 12 soldiers and one civilian at the Texas base on November 5, 2009, in the deadliest attack ever carried out on a US military installation.
The Pentagon announced on Monday that Hegseth had recommended, and Donald Trump approved, his death by Army firing squad, the first military execution since 1961.
Murphy was told of the livestream plan on air by CNN’s Erin Burnett on Thursday night and said he was hearing it for the first time.
‘I understand that in this country we have the death penalty, but public executions is medieval,’ he said, calling it ‘one of the things that we abhor about terrorist groups.’
Tillis said Hasan ‘should face the death penalty’ but drew the line at making it public.
Ossoff accused Hegseth of staging an ‘obscene medieval spectacle’ while ‘running a department that is falling into chaos.’
‘The guy cannot run the military competently,’ he said.
The War Secretary has faced months of criticism over his handling of the Iran war after Tehran managed to shut down traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway that carries one-fifth of the world’s oil.
Yet his standing inside Trump’s inner circle has only grown, as Hegseth was one of the few cabinet members to back going to war with Iran in its earliest days.
The War Secretary has faced months of criticism over his handling of the Iran war after Tehran managed to shut down traffic through the Strait of Hormuz
The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said that public executions ‘constitute a form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,’ the same stance it has taken on Iran and Afghanistan.
Hasan, who was paralyzed when he was shot by police during the rampage, was convicted on 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder in 2013.
Army rules require the sentence to be carried out within 150 days of the president’s approval.
