By Phil Stewart and Nandita Bose
WASHINGTON, Oct 9 (Reuters) – Republican US lawmakers joined religious leaders and international observers on Friday in opposing a Pentagon plan to livestream an execution by firing squad, while President Donald Trump said he has not yet decided whether to allow the live feed.
Vice President JD Vance expressed skepticism over whether the Pentagon will proceed with livestreaming the scheduled December 3 execution of former US Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan, who was found guilty in a US military trial of fatally shooting 13 people at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009.
“I don’t know that that’s actually going to happen,” Vance told reporters in Cincinnati, referring to the livestream plan championed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
If it is shown publicly, Vance said, “I’m not going to be watching it.”
Trump told reporters that Hasan deserves the death penalty by firing squad, calling him “totally nuts.” But when asked if he wants the execution livestreamed, the Republican president said he has yet to “make a determination about that.”
A senior US Catholic bishop and a US evangelical Christian leader voiced opposition to the plan, as did the UN human rights office.
REPUBLICANS VOICE CONCERN
Several Republican US lawmakers argued against livestreaming.
Senator John Curtis wrote on social media that “a civilization erodes when it cultivates an appetite for executions as a form of entertainment.” Senator Thom Tillis and Representative Austin Scott said livestreaming executions is what Islamist extremists would do. Representative Rob Bresnahan said the pain felt by victims and family members “deserves respect, not a public show.”
“This should be reconsidered,” Representative Michael Baumgartner wrote on social media.
Democrats were overwhelmingly opposed.
The event would be extraordinary, even for a country that has long employed capital punishment. A government execution has never been broadcast or livestreamed, according to death penalty experts, and the US military has not executed anyone by firing squad since 1945. Hasan, now 56, is believed to be confined to a wheelchair, having been shot by police during his arrest.
A senior White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Trump does not oppose the idea of livestreaming the execution but could change his mind. The White House is hearing concerns from lawmakers, allies and religious leaders who are urging the administration not to livestream it, the official said.
Hegseth, a Trump appointee, confirmed the plans for the livestreamed execution on Thursday.
‘A CULTURE OF DEATH’
Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, condemned the planned livestream as a “barbaric promotion of a culture of death.”
Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, said on social media that a livestreamed execution by firing squad “risks turning one of the state’s most solemn responsibilities into a public spectacle, promoting a culture of death, rather than a culture that upholds the dignity of every human being.”
Hegseth, a member of a conservative evangelical denomination, has made his Christian faith a hallmark of his tenure as defense secretary and has led prayer services at the Pentagon. He also has brushed off Pope Leo’s criticism of the Iran war.
Hasan, an American-born Muslim, said during his 2013 trial that he carried out the shootings to try to stop what he called a US war on Islam.
“Whatever the controversy is about the method of the execution, I hope that people don’t forget that this is a guy who brutally murdered a lot of innocent people,” Vance told reporters.
‘FREE PROPAGANDA’
Joe Kent, who resigned this year as Trump’s head of the National Counterterrorism Center, wrote on social media: “Streaming his execution is not just a stain on our morality — it also gives the terrorists free propaganda that they will use to radicalize & recruit more terrorists.”
Brendan Carr, chair of the Federal Communications Commission, told CNBC it is his understanding that the execution would not air on broadcast TV but said he would defer to Hegseth on whether US networks could air it.
US law prohibits the recording or broadcasting of executions in the federal prison system. Military regulations have not applied that same prohibition. Courts have rejected lawsuits brought by media organizations seeking broader public access to executions.
The UN human rights office said public executions violate prohibitions against torture.
“Public executions constitute a form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” Shabia Mantoo, a spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, told a news briefing in Geneva.
Amnesty International called the use of a firing squad “reprehensible.”
Mental health experts said it also could traumatize children.
The execution is scheduled to be held at the same sprawling military base where Hasan opened fire with a handgun in a medical facility.
The Pentagon on Friday declined to say whether families of those killed in Hasan’s attack would be invited to attend the execution, as is common practice in US civilian executions. It remains unclear how the Army would select the shooters and what protocols might be followed during the execution itself. The Pentagon said it would release details later.
The plan to livestream the execution comes at a time of heightened debate in the US over the death penalty following the botched lethal injection last week of a Tennessee woman who was sentenced to death for a 1995 murder. The controversy has flared in the run-up to the November 3 US midterm elections in which Republicans are fighting to retain control of Congress.
(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Nandita Bose in Washington; Additional reporting by Bo Erickson; Writing by Brad Brooks and Daniel Trotta; Editing by Andy Sullivan and Will Dunham)
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