As an Iranian man awaited execution with the noose already around his neck, the victim's mother stepped up and spared his life by giving him an emotional slap across the face, a newspaper reported on Thursday.
In 2007, Balal had killed Abdullah Hussain Zadeh in a street fight with a knife when he was just 19. Since then, he has been able to gather a rare public campaign to save his life, Agence France-Presse reported.
As a large crowd gathered on Tuesday morning, Balal was led by police officials to a public execution site in the northern city of Nowshahr, Shargh newspaper reported.
Samereh Alinejad, mother of the victim, asked the crowd whether they know "how difficult it is to live in an empty house."
According to AFP, Alinejad also lost another son four years ago in a motorbike accident.
The mother approached the murderer as he was standing on a chair before a makeshift gallows and had the noose around his neck. After slapping him in a spontaneous moment, she was assisted by her husband, Abdul Ghani Hussain Zadeh, a former professional footballer, in removing the rope from Balal's neck.
"I am a believer. I had a dream in which my son told me that he was at peace and in a good place... After that, all my relatives, even my mother, put pressure on me to pardon the killer," Alinejad told Shargh.
"The murderer was crying, asking for forgiveness. I slapped him in the face. That slap helped to calm me down," she said. "Now that I've forgiven him, I feel relieved."
Balal said the "slap was the space between revenge and forgiveness."
"I've asked my friends not to carry knives... I wish someone had slapped me in the face when I wanted to carry one," Balal said in a television interview.
Since the beginning of 2014, more than 170 people have been executed in the Islamic republic, according to the United Nations.
See the heart-breaking pictures here.
