{"id":1435,"date":"2014-04-17T15:25:20","date_gmt":"2014-04-17T15:25:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kashmir-today.net\/?p=1435"},"modified":"2014-04-17T15:25:20","modified_gmt":"2014-04-17T15:25:20","slug":"mother-spares-life-sons-killer-slap-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/?p=1435","title":{"rendered":"Mother spares life of son\u2019s killer with slap in Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iran:<\/strong> An Iranian mother spared the life of her son\u2019s convicted murderer with an emotional slap in the face as he awaited execution with the noose around his neck, a newspaper reported Thursday.<\/p>\n

The dramatic climax followed a rare public campaign to save the life of Balal, who at 19 killed another young man, Abdollah Hosseinzadeh, in a street fight with a knife back in 2007.<\/p>\n

Shargh newspaper said police officers led Balal to a public execution site in the northern city of Nowshahr as a large crowd gathering on Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n

Samereh Alinejad, mother of the victim who lost another son in a motorbike accident four years ago, asked the crowd whether they know \u201chow difficult it is to live in an empty house.\u201d<\/p>\n

Balal, black-hooded and standing on a chair before a makeshift gallows, had the noose around his neck when Alinejad approached.<\/p>\n

She slapped him in the face and removed the rope from his neck assisted by her husband, Abdolghani Hosseinzadeh, a former professional footballer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am a believer. I had a dream in which my son told me that he was at peace and in a good place\u2026 After that, all my relatives, even my mother, put pressure on me to pardon the killer,\u201d Alinejad told Shargh.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe murderer was crying, asking for forgiveness. I slapped him in the face. That slap helped to calm me down,\u201d she said. \u201cNow that I\u2019ve forgiven him, I feel relieved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Balal said the \u201cslap was the space between revenge and forgiveness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve asked my friends not to carry knives\u2026 I wish someone had slapped me in the face when I wanted to carry one,\u201d Balal said in a television interview.<\/p>\n

A high-profile campaign was launched by public figures including Adel Ferdosipour, a popular football commentator and TV show host, and former international footballer Ali Daei, appealed for the victim\u2019s family to forgive the killer.<\/p>\n

According to the United Nations, more than 170 people have been executed in the Islamic republic since the beginning of 2014.<\/p>\n

Under the country\u2019s interpretation of Islamic sharia laws in force since a 1979 revolution, murder and several other crimes are punishable by death.<\/p>\n

But the victim\u2019s family has the right to spare a convict\u2019s life in return for blood money, under Islamic laws.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Iran: An Iranian mother spared the life of her son\u2019s convicted murderer with an emotional slap in the face as he awaited execution with the noose around his neck, a newspaper reported Thursday. The dramatic climax followed a rare public campaign to save the life of Balal, who at 19 killed another young man, Abdollah […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1436,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1435\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}