The organization Amnesty International has warned that the imminent execution of Nidal Hasan, the Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people in a shooting at the U.S. military base at Fort Hood in 2009, represents an act of extreme cruelty, exacerbated by the decision of the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, to order that the execution be broadcast live to the public.
The Deputy Director of Research at Amnesty International USA, Justin Mazzola, firmly rejects both the execution scheduled for December 3 and the fact that it is the first execution by firing squad since 1961 and, moreover, its real-time broadcast.
According to Mazzola, the execution is not only "condemnable" in itself, but it "highlights the inherent arbitrariness of the death penalty; broadcasting the deprivation of life by firing squad live would only multiply the cruelty of capital punishment and perpetuate the cycle of violence that, supposedly, the authorities intend to eradicate."
The Amnesty official emphasizes that "the death penalty constitutes a violation of Human Rights, under any circumstances," and recalls that international Human Rights mechanisms maintain that public executions "are incompatible with the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."
Mazzola also counters the argument of its supposed preventive effect by highlighting that "the claim that the death penalty has a greater deterrent effect is unfounded: there is no evidence that it has a unique deterrent effect. The death penalty does not make us safer."