US Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has defended the Trump administration’s plan to livestream the execution of Nidal Hasan, the former US Army major convicted of killing 13 soldiers at Fort Hood in Texas, dismissing concerns that the broadcast could fuel radicalisation or turn him into a martyr.“I don’t see an elevated risk at this point at all because of this,” Mullin said in an interview with CBS News’ Face the Nation on Sunday.“If you attack America, we will come after you, and we will make sure that the punishment fits the crime,” he added.Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, is scheduled to be executed by firing squad on December 3 for the 2009 shooting at Fort Hood, in which 13 people were killed and 32 others injured.The plan to broadcast his execution live, announced by Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth last week, has drawn criticism from both Republicans and Democrats. President Donald Trump has backed the idea but has not made a final decision on whether the execution will be televised.Mullin said the administration had considered the potential risks and argued that viewers would not be forced to watch the broadcast.“No one has to watch it if they don’t choose to,” he told CBS News.However, critics have warned that broadcasting the execution could give extremist groups propaganda material and increase security risks for Americans at home and abroad.Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski called the proposal “gruesome”, arguing that it could give Hasan the martyrdom he sought.“It’s something I would expect from terrorists and dictators, but not here in America,” she wrote on X, adding that the way the US carries out justice matters as much as the justice itself.Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner also cautioned that a public execution could provide terrorist organisations with a propaganda victory, fuel radicalisation and put American service members, diplomats and citizens overseas at greater risk.Hasan, who was shot during the attack and now uses a wheelchair, admitted to killing the unarmed troops at a crowded medical facility at Fort Hood. During his trial, he said he believed he was protecting Muslims and the Taliban in Afghanistan from the US military.If carried out, Hasan’s execution would be the first by the US military since 1961 and its first firing-squad execution since World War II. A public broadcast would also mark the first public execution in the United States in nearly a century.
