Livestreaming US execution would breach prohibition of torture, UN rights office warns

The UN human rights office (OHCHR) on Friday warned that livestreaming a planned execution by firing squad in the United States would amount to a public execution and breach the absolute prohibition on torture.The statement came after US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth vowed to publicly execute Nidal Malik Hasan, who was sentenced to death by a military jury after being convicted of killing 13 people and injuring 32 in a 2009 shooting at the Fort Hood military base in Texas. OHCHR’s Shabia Mantoo was responding to a question from journalists at a press briefing in Geneva.She noted that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, in response to public executions in Afghanistan and Iran had previously stressed that such executions “constitute a form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.“Failure to respect this prohibition would inevitably render the execution arbitrary in nature, and result in a violation of the right to life and the absolute prohibition of torture,” the spokesperson added.UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said during Friday’s press briefing in New York that the “possibility of…a government executing someone in public or in front of live...