What a Public Execution Looks Like
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s announcement that a convicted murderer would be publicly executed later this year prompted a strange and vivid memory of a man I saw put to death in a similar ceremony long ago. Hegseth said last week that the death sentence of Nidal Hasan, a former U.S. Army major who killed thirteen people at Fort Hood, in Texas, in 2009, would be carried out by firing squad—on live stream, for all the world to see. What I saw was different, but not by much.
It was September, 1998, at the Kabul Stadium. I’d arrived the night before to a city in ruins. Kabul in those years was emerging from a kind of apocalypse, the evidence of which lay everywhere, in the pulverized buildings, in the packs of scavenging orphans, in the lack of electricity or schools or any other feature of the modern world. In 1979, Soviet troops had come to conquer the country; a decade later, they departed, leaving behind a demolished land and some two million people dead. After that, Afghanistan descended into anarchy, with bands of warlords grabbing turf, loot, women, and boys. There was no government to speak of, no police. The anarchy carried on for seven years and ended only when a group of fundamentalist Islamists who called themselves “the students”—the Taliban, in the local language—seized the capital. The Taliban were nasty and unforgiving, but they brought the chaos to heel by imposing a kind of medieval order. Women were prohibited from working or from walking the streets alone. Thieves lost their hands. Adulterers were stoned to death. The punishments were carried out in public every Friday, after prayers.
On that Friday in September, the stadium was packed. Attendance was mandatory, but a cleric with a loudspeaker tried to give the event a festive air. “The people are coming!” he cried, as Afghans shuffled in. “The people are coming to see, with their own eyes, what Sharia means.” I didn’t detect a lot of enthusiasm in the crowd. Some orphans, their faces filthy, walked the stands hawking candy. The arena was segregated by sex—women on one side, men on the other—with a special section in the stands for the handicapped. The main event was to be the execution of a man convicted of murdering his neighbor.
Hegseth said last week that Hasan would be killed by “soldiers with rifles.” He told the political activist Jack Posobiec, “We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.” It wasn’t the first time Hegseth had spoken of the virtues of cruelty and humiliation. Against Iran, for instance, he has vowed to give “no quarter, no mercy for our enemies.” Oddly enough, Iran and Afghanistan, both ruled by clerics, are the only countries in the world that still regularly stage public executions.
In the Kabul Stadium, I had a seat at midfield. Two years into the Taliban’s rule, they had already acquired a global reputation for brutality, in part because of their public executions. To encourage people around the world to see things their way, they had allowed a handful of Western journalists to visit. As one such “honored guest,” I was led to the sidelines for the best possible view.
The execution had a warmup act: an amputation. A white Toyota Hilux, the Taliban’s signature vehicle, rumbled into the stadium, carrying four men dressed in green hoods; they led a fifth man, a convicted pickpocket, onto the field. The hooded men laid the prisoner in the grass and crouched around him. Even from up close, it was hard to see what they were doing, but I could imagine. “Nothing that is being done here is against God’s law,” the voice on the loudspeaker said.
Hegseth, too, has invoked God to justify violence; in March, after Israeli and American forces attacked Iran, he recited a prayer at the Pentagon in which he called for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy” and asked that every round find its mark “in the mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ.”
In Kabul, the men in green hoods stood up. The amputation had been completed. One of the men, the leader, held up the convict’s hand and wheeled around to show it off. Nobody cheered; after so many years of violence, the crowd seemed numb. With a shrug, the Taliban chief tossed the severed hand onto the grass. The prisoner, still conscious, stared wide-eyed at his stump, but he did not scream. The hooded men loaded him back into the truck and drove away.
In the United States, prisoners are occasionally executed by firing squads. One recent instance was in March, 2025, at the Broad River Correctional Institution, in South Carolina. A man named Brad Sigmon, convicted of killing his girlfriend’s parents, was strapped to a chair, wearing a hood and a target on his chest. He was shot by three men with rifles, from fifteen feet away. Hasan, the Fort Hood murderer, will presumably come in for similar treatment, except that he is incapacitated; he relies on a wheelchair to get around.
In Kabul, another Hilux pulled onto the grass, carrying another prisoner. He was handcuffed, and his head and body were wrapped in a gray blanket. His name was Atiqullah. He’d been convicted of murdering a man in an irrigation dispute; the voice on the loudspeaker said that he’d beaten his victim to death with an axe. The Taliban were not known for due process, so it was impossible to know what kind of trial he had received. The hooded men led Atiqullah to midfield and sat him down in the dirt. Their leader, the one who had held up the severed hand, was introduced as Maulvi Abdur Rahman Muzami, a judge. He paced back and forth, with a green surgical mask pulled down around his neck.
Although Hegseth often seems to enjoy the idea that pain is being inflicted in his name, the mood at the Kabul Stadium was more subdued. The Taliban said that they were executing Atiqullah not because they wanted to but because it was necessary after the mayhem of the civil war. “The Quran says the killer must be killed in order to create peace in society,” the voice on the loudspeaker said. “If punishment is not meted out, such crimes will become common. Anarchy and chaos will return.”
Behind me, the family of the condemned man began pleading with relatives of the victim, who were seated nearby. Under Islamic law, the execution could be halted if the bereaved family so decided. “Please spare my son,” Atiqullah’s father, Abdul Modin, said. He was weeping. “Please.” The victim’s family wouldn’t budge. “He killed my son,” the father, Ahmad Noor, said. “Even if you gave me all the gold in the world, I would not accept it.”
“O ye who believe!” the voice on the loudspeaker said. “Revenge is prescribed for you in the matter of the murdered; the freeman for the freeman and the slave for the slave.” Noor turned to his son, the victim’s brother. “My son will do it,” he said.
Atiqullah remained at midfield, oblivious, the blanket over his head. One of the Taliban handed the victim’s brother a Kalashnikov. The mood in the stadium tightened. “In revenge, there is life,” the voice on the loudspeaker said.
The victim’s brother walked to midfield, crouched, took aim, and fired. Atiqullah lingered for a second and then collapsed. The shooter circled, appearing to search for signs of life, and fired again. The spectators ran onto the field, as if at the end of a football game. Atiqullah’s body was carried away in a Hilux. The brother, surrounded by friends, held up his arms in triumph.
After Hegseth made his announcement, the reactions were mixed, even among his bosses. Trump, an enthusiast of professional wrestling and the Ultimate Fighting Championship, said that he’d personally approved the live stream of Hasan being killed. But, asked about the possibility that the video could be used as a recruiting tool for terrorists, he seemed to hesitate. “I’m going to make a determination about that,” he said. “But he will be killed.” ♦