US homeland security chief dismisses security threat from livestreaming execution

WASHINGTON (AFP): A top Trump administration official said Sunday that the planned livestream execution of the perpetrator of a mass killing of US soldiers would not pose an additional security risk to the United States.

“I don’t see an elevated risk at this point at all because of this,” US Homeland Security chief Markwayne Mullin told CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” when asked if it risked turning the perpetrator into a martyr for his cause.

“I think people need to understand… if you attack America, we will come after you, and we will make sure that the punishment fits the crime,” he added.

Nidal Hasan, 56, a US Army psychiatrist, shot dead 13 people and wounded more than 30 in an Al-Qaeda-inspired attack at a military base at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009.

He would the first person executed by a US military firing squad since 1945.

The plan to publicly broadcast his death by firing squad, scheduled for December 3, was first put forward by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon on Thursday, drawing condemnation in the United States and beyond.

President Donald Trump later left uncertain whether the execution would be publicly broadcast.

When Mullin was pressed Sunday with questions about livestreaming, he told CBS: “No one has to watch it if they don’t choose to.”

Trump “leads this country with a very, very, very direct, forward, straight hand, and he’s restoring America values and bringing us… where America should be.”

UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham condemned the possibility of a public execution in the US as “abhorrent.”

“It’s something that I can’t say I ever want to see anywhere in the world,” he told The Rest is Politics podcast.

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