A young Iranian man who escaped a hangman’s noose with just seconds to spare when his victim’s mother intervened was the beneficiary of a high-profile campaign to save his life.
In a case that has provoked surprise in Iran and across the world, the killer, known only as Balal, was saved dramatically on Tuesday, as a crowd looked on, awaiting his execution.
He survived despite the mother of the man he murdered in a street fight seven years ago refusing an offer of so-called blood money until the very last moment at the gallows.
Photo: AFP
As the blindfolded convict awaited his fate, a grieving Samereh Alinejad, who lost another son in a motorbike accident four years ago, emotionally asked out loud if those watching the spectacle unfold knew “how difficult it is to live in an empty house?”
Instead of participating in qisas — in which under the Shariah law of retribution relatives can push away the chair on which the condemned man stands — Alinejad pardoned the killer, imparting only a slap on his face as punishment.
According to the UN, more than 170 people have been executed in Iran since the beginning of next year.
However, under the country’s interpretation of Islamic laws in force since the 1979 revolution, a victim’s family has the right to spare a convict’s life in return for financial payment.
Film director Mostafa Kiaei said that other relatives of Abdollah Hosseinzadeh, whom Balal stabbed to death in 2007, favored taking the blood money he and others had raised, but the family had not been unanimous.
Iran’s Shargh newspaper said police officers had led Balal, black-hooded, to the execution site in Nowshahr.
Widely published photographs captured the drama, with the killer gritting his teeth, seemingly ready for death.
However, after slapping him, Alinejad removed the hangman’s rope with the help of her husband, Abdolghani Hosseinzadeh, a former professional soccer player.
“I am a believer. I had a dream in which my son told me that he was at peace and in a good place,” Alinejad was quoted as saying. “After that, all my relatives, even my mother, put pressure on me to pardon the killer.”
The “slap was the space between revenge and forgiveness,” she added. “Now that I’ve forgiven him, I feel relieved.”
Murder and several other crimes are punishable by death in Iran.
The campaign to save Balal was launched last month by Kiaei and celebrities including Adel Ferdosipour, a soccer commentator and TV show host, and Ali Daei, a former international soccer, asking the family to forgive the killer.
“This convict was the same person that we raised money for him to pay the blood money,” Kiaei said.
The cash came from ticket sales to a special screening of the director’s latest film, Special Line, with the proceeds being paid into a special account.
“The father of the victim wants to spend the money on building a gym under his son’s name in their city,” Kiaei said. “Even a few days after the show, people were still depositing money.”
Asked if he felt the public appeal had been decisive, Kiaei added: “Considering the shortage of a presence of NGOs in our country, I think those people who have tools, like us, whose tool was the film or Adel Ferdosipour, whose TV show has a big audience... can encourage people to do good things.”
Meanwhile, it was reported on Thursday that a group of Iranian artists has launched an appeal against a woman’s execution.
Reyhaneh Jabbari, 26, was sentenced to death for the murder of a former government intelligence official, and it has been suggested that her punishment could be imminent.
However, her lawyer, Abdolsamad Khoramshahi, on Thursday said that no sentencing date had been set.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the