Published on: 2026-10-12
Source: United Nations – United Nations –
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October 9, 2026 Human Rights
On Friday, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) warned that the live broadcast of the planned execution by firing squad in the United States would be tantamount to a public execution and violate the absolute prohibition on torture.
This statement followed the promise by U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to publicly execute Nidal Malik Hasan. He was sentenced to death by a military court after being found guilty of killing 13 people. Hasan opened fire at the Fort Hood military base in Texas in 2009. Another 32 people were injured.
UNHCR representative Shabia Mantu voiced the Office’s position while responding to journalists’ questions at a briefing in Geneva.
She noted that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, when commenting on public executions in Afghanistan and Iran, had previously emphasized: they “constitute a form of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.”
UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said during a Friday briefing in New York that “the possibility that… a government would execute a person publicly or in front of television cameras frankly disgusts me.”
Earlier this month, the UNHCR also called on the authorities of the U.S. state of Tennessee to abandon further attempts to carry out the death sentence against Krista Pike.
Increase in executions
In the report on the death penalty presented to the Human Rights Council and published in August 2025, UN Secretary-General António Guterres welcomed the progress made in abolishing capital punishment worldwide, but expressed concern that in some countries the number of executions is increasing.
The report states that in 2024, there were 1,518 executions carried out in 15 countries worldwide, which is 32 percent higher than the global figure for 2023.
The document also states that on January 20, 2025, the President of the United States signed a decree lifting the federal moratorium on the death penalty, and that in South Carolina in March of the same year, a death sentence was carried out by firing squad — the first time in the US in 15 years.
“Until the abolition of the death penalty, states must not violate Article 7 of the Covenant by carrying out executions that are cruel, excessively painful, or degrading,” the report states, citing the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
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