The U.S. would join a very short list of nations that carry out capital punishment in public if it goes forward with plans to live-stream a military execution this year.
Only two countries carried out the death penalty in public last year, according to Amnesty International’s tracking of 2,700 executions in 17 countries.
Iran executed 11 people publicly and Afghanistan killed six, the human rights organization said.
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The Pentagon announced Thursday that it would live stream the Dec. 3 execution by firing squad of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan at Fort Hood, Texas, the first military execution in more than 65 years.
US took executions behind closed doors nearly a century ago
Hasan was convicted of killing 13 people and injuring 32 others in a shooting at the Texas military base in 2009.
The U.S. has not publicly executed anyone since the 1930s as capital punishment has moved from the town square to places out of public view, typically in prison death chambers.
Over time, execution methods also have changed from hangings and an occasional firing squad to the electric chair, gas chamber and lethal injection.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who has previously been critical of public executions in Iran, approved Hasan’s firing squad death, a Pentagon spokesman said Monday.
Capital punishment overseas is rarely done in public
If Hasan’s execution goes ahead publicly as planned, the U.S. would be in rare company with one country it is currently at war with — Iran — and another enemy it fought for years in Afghanistan — the Taliban.
In the last four years, the only public killings documented by Amnesty were in Iran and Afghanistan.
But Amnesty only reports on judicial executions and does not have numbers for China, North Korea and Vietnam, where executions are believed to be carried out. It has noted that it has received reports of public executions in North Korea that it couldn’t verify.
In 2021, at least nine people were publicly executed in Yemen, Amnesty said.
Saudi Arabia also conducted public executions in the past, but not in recent years.
Iran led the report with the most executions — 2,159 — though few took place in public settings, which usually are reserved for political prisoners. They are typically carried out in public squares, where the convicted are hanged from cranes mounted on trucks.
In July, two men convicted of killing four police officers during nationwide anti-government protests in January were hanged at dawn in Alikhani Square, in the central city of Isfahan, state media reported.
Taliban’s return to power includes executions in stadiums
Human rights organizations have condemned the resumption of public executions in Afghanistan after the Taliban-led government seized power in 2021 in the wake of the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces.
In the late 1990s during their previous rule, the Taliban regularly carried out public executions, floggings and stonings.
In December, tens of thousands of people gathered in a stadium in the eastern city of Khost to see a man convicted of killing 13 members of a family, including several children, be shot to death. It was the 11th execution carried out since the Taliban’s return to power.
The victims’ kin were offered the choice of forgiving the man and sparing his life or having him shot, the Supreme Court said.
They chose the death penalty and one of their relatives pulled the trigger.