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US President Donald Trump shakes hands with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth before speaking at Anduril Industries in Sparrows Point, Maryland, on October 6, 2026.
(Photo by Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
UN Says Trump-Hegseth Livestream of Execution Would Breach ‘Absolute Prohibition of Torture’
"The world’s supposedly greatest (or formerly greatest) democracy has arrived at a horrific new moral nadir," said one columnist of the plan to livestream the killing by firing squad of Nidal Hasan.
Oct 09, 2026
As rights advocates across the US expressed horror at the Trump administration's confirmed plans to publicly broadcast the execution of Nidal Hasan, the former military psychiatrist who was convicted of killing 13 people in a mass shooting at Fort Hood in 2009, the top United Nations human rights expert warned that the public state killing would violate international laws prohibiting torture.
“The livestreaming of an execution is tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture,” the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) told Agence France-Presse Friday.
As Common Dreams reported Thursday, the US Army announced that Hasan would be executed by firing squad at Fort Hood on December 3, with the Trump administration inviting the public to watch the shooting via livestream.
The UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions said in a report to the UN Human Rights Council in June that all capital punishment must be abolished worldwide, as "severe physical pain and psychological distress are an inherent part of the design and implementation" of the practice.
The OHCHR has particularly spoken out against public executions, such as those that have been carried out in Afghanistan and Iran.
Public killings by the state "constitute a form of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment," the office has said.
"This planned livestreamed execution says it all about what is happening in America today, opening the window ever wider on the Trump administration’s moral vacuity and its paucity of human decency."
Should the livestream go forward, Hasan's execution will be the first public state-sanctioned killing in the US in 90 years, according to Michael L. Radelet, professor emeritus at the University of Colorado Boulder, an expert on capital punishment.
Rainey Bethea, a Black man, was hanged in Kentucky in 1936 after reportedly confessing to the killing of a white woman. He was never charged with murder. Thousands of people attended his execution outside a courthouse.
As Edmarverson A. Santos wrote at the independent research platform Diplomacy & Law, the Trump administration's proposed execution livestream "raises substantial concerns under international human rights law."
"The UN Human Rights Committee expressly interprets Article 7 of the [International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights] as prohibiting public executions and considers executions conducted in violation of that provision to constitute arbitrary deprivations of life under Article 6," wrote Santos. "A government-sponsored livestream accessible to the general public could fall within that interpretation, particularly where the condemned person's death is deliberately displayed as part of the state's punitive message."
"Hasan's conviction for intentional murder and the presidential approval of his death sentence do not independently establish the legality of publicly broadcasting his execution," Santos added.
Paul Daley, a columnist for The Guardian Australia, wrote Thursday that the planned livestream—and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's statement that the execution will be made viewable to all to show that "there’s serious consequences for these types of things"—amounted to "state-sanctioned killing as entertainment."
"The world’s supposedly greatest (or formerly greatest) democracy has arrived at a horrific new moral nadir," wrote Daley. "This represents a significant lurch in the US from civilization towards savagery... And this planned livestreamed execution says it all about what is happening in America today, opening the window ever wider on the Trump administration’s moral vacuity and its paucity of human decency."
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As rights advocates across the US expressed horror at the Trump administration's confirmed plans to publicly broadcast the execution of Nidal Hasan, the former military psychiatrist who was convicted of killing 13 people in a mass shooting at Fort Hood in 2009, the top United Nations human rights expert warned that the public state killing would violate international laws prohibiting torture.
“The livestreaming of an execution is tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture,” the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) told Agence France-Presse Friday.
As Common Dreams reported Thursday, the US Army announced that Hasan would be executed by firing squad at Fort Hood on December 3, with the Trump administration inviting the public to watch the shooting via livestream.
The UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions said in a report to the UN Human Rights Council in June that all capital punishment must be abolished worldwide, as "severe physical pain and psychological distress are an inherent part of the design and implementation" of the practice.
The OHCHR has particularly spoken out against public executions, such as those that have been carried out in Afghanistan and Iran.
Public killings by the state "constitute a form of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment," the office has said.
"This planned livestreamed execution says it all about what is happening in America today, opening the window ever wider on the Trump administration’s moral vacuity and its paucity of human decency."
Should the livestream go forward, Hasan's execution will be the first public state-sanctioned killing in the US in 90 years, according to Michael L. Radelet, professor emeritus at the University of Colorado Boulder, an expert on capital punishment.
Rainey Bethea, a Black man, was hanged in Kentucky in 1936 after reportedly confessing to the killing of a white woman. He was never charged with murder. Thousands of people attended his execution outside a courthouse.
As Edmarverson A. Santos wrote at the independent research platform Diplomacy & Law, the Trump administration's proposed execution livestream "raises substantial concerns under international human rights law."
"The UN Human Rights Committee expressly interprets Article 7 of the [International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights] as prohibiting public executions and considers executions conducted in violation of that provision to constitute arbitrary deprivations of life under Article 6," wrote Santos. "A government-sponsored livestream accessible to the general public could fall within that interpretation, particularly where the condemned person's death is deliberately displayed as part of the state's punitive message."
"Hasan's conviction for intentional murder and the presidential approval of his death sentence do not independently establish the legality of publicly broadcasting his execution," Santos added.
Paul Daley, a columnist for The Guardian Australia, wrote Thursday that the planned livestream—and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's statement that the execution will be made viewable to all to show that "there’s serious consequences for these types of things"—amounted to "state-sanctioned killing as entertainment."
"The world’s supposedly greatest (or formerly greatest) democracy has arrived at a horrific new moral nadir," wrote Daley. "This represents a significant lurch in the US from civilization towards savagery... And this planned livestreamed execution says it all about what is happening in America today, opening the window ever wider on the Trump administration’s moral vacuity and its paucity of human decency."
As rights advocates across the US expressed horror at the Trump administration's confirmed plans to publicly broadcast the execution of Nidal Hasan, the former military psychiatrist who was convicted of killing 13 people in a mass shooting at Fort Hood in 2009, the top United Nations human rights expert warned that the public state killing would violate international laws prohibiting torture.
“The livestreaming of an execution is tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture,” the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) told Agence France-Presse Friday.
As Common Dreams reported Thursday, the US Army announced that Hasan would be executed by firing squad at Fort Hood on December 3, with the Trump administration inviting the public to watch the shooting via livestream.
The UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions said in a report to the UN Human Rights Council in June that all capital punishment must be abolished worldwide, as "severe physical pain and psychological distress are an inherent part of the design and implementation" of the practice.
The OHCHR has particularly spoken out against public executions, such as those that have been carried out in Afghanistan and Iran.
Public killings by the state "constitute a form of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment," the office has said.
"This planned livestreamed execution says it all about what is happening in America today, opening the window ever wider on the Trump administration’s moral vacuity and its paucity of human decency."
Should the livestream go forward, Hasan's execution will be the first public state-sanctioned killing in the US in 90 years, according to Michael L. Radelet, professor emeritus at the University of Colorado Boulder, an expert on capital punishment.
Rainey Bethea, a Black man, was hanged in Kentucky in 1936 after reportedly confessing to the killing of a white woman. He was never charged with murder. Thousands of people attended his execution outside a courthouse.
As Edmarverson A. Santos wrote at the independent research platform Diplomacy & Law, the Trump administration's proposed execution livestream "raises substantial concerns under international human rights law."
"The UN Human Rights Committee expressly interprets Article 7 of the [International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights] as prohibiting public executions and considers executions conducted in violation of that provision to constitute arbitrary deprivations of life under Article 6," wrote Santos. "A government-sponsored livestream accessible to the general public could fall within that interpretation, particularly where the condemned person's death is deliberately displayed as part of the state's punitive message."
"Hasan's conviction for intentional murder and the presidential approval of his death sentence do not independently establish the legality of publicly broadcasting his execution," Santos added.
Paul Daley, a columnist for The Guardian Australia, wrote Thursday that the planned livestream—and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's statement that the execution will be made viewable to all to show that "there’s serious consequences for these types of things"—amounted to "state-sanctioned killing as entertainment."
"The world’s supposedly greatest (or formerly greatest) democracy has arrived at a horrific new moral nadir," wrote Daley. "This represents a significant lurch in the US from civilization towards savagery... And this planned livestreamed execution says it all about what is happening in America today, opening the window ever wider on the Trump administration’s moral vacuity and its paucity of human decency."
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