Pentagon chief says execution of military base shooter to be 'public'

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the firing squad execution of convicted military base shooter Nidal Hasan will be "public," according to a video shared Thursday by the Pentagon.

"He's going to get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be, and we'll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it's public," Hegseth told right-wing influencer Jack Posobiec in a clip posted on X by various official Pentagon accounts.

"People need to understand that... there's serious consequence for these types of things," Hegseth said, speaking aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier.

Asked to clarify what Hegseth meant by the execution being "public," a Pentagon spokesperson referred AFP to the US Army, which in turn said to contact the Pentagon.

According to rights group Amnesty International, at least 17 public executions are known to have been carried out last year -- six in Afghanistan and 11 in Iran.

The Pentagon announced earlier this week that US President Donald Trump had approved Hasan's execution for the 2009 fatal shooting 13 people at Fort Hood.

Twelve of the dead and 30 of the wounded were soldiers. Hasan was shot and partially paralyzed by a civilian police officer who responded to the attack.

He was sentenced to death by a military jury in 2013 for carrying out the Al-Qaeda inspired attack.

The court that convicted Hasan was told that he was opposed to the US military's occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and that he had spoken online with an alleged Al-Qaeda figure, radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen subsequently killed in a US drone strike in Yemen.

Hasan's execution will be the first carried out by the US military since 1961.