These days I have learned of the news that occurred a few years ago in Iran regarding the execution of a death row inmate. Or should I say the experience of forgiveness that it holds, which has led me back to the Good News of Jesus when he insisted so much on the importance of this transformative attitude. I will tell you:
Balal Abdullah, a 26-year-old young man, had killed another young man in a knife fight in a northern Iranian city. He was arrested and sentenced to death in a long and very difficult trial for the families. Finally, the moment arrived to carry out the death sentence, with the gallows erected the night before in the middle of the street, around which nearly a thousand people gathered at dawn, in front of the scaffold.
The condemned man cried out for mercy, just as some of the attendees requested grace for the condemned. The victim’s mother and her husband had the right to participate in the execution or in the pardon, maintaining or withdrawing the chair from under the accused’s feet, according to the rules of Qisas, “an eye for an eye” in the Quranic Sharia.
Something broke inside Samereh Alinejad, the victim’s mother, listening to this man begging for forgiveness and mercy. So when Balal was already on the small chair with the rope around his neck and his eyes covered by a black veil, the woman stopped the execution: accompanied by her husband, she went up to the gallows and slapped the convict; a gesture of relief that in Iranian culture is interpreted as having forgiven the offense and, in this case, saved his life. Immediately afterward, she pronounced the word “forgiven,” and her husband removed the rope from the young man’s neck. The condemned man had saved his life and kept crying, gratefully asking for forgiveness for the damage he had caused.
For his part, the victim’s father accepted that there was no deliberate intention to kill his son.
The family had already suffered the death of another son in a traffic accident. But the most moving thing happened when both women, the convict’s mother and the victim’s mother, embraced, sealing a great healing pact emotionally and spiritually, in a country so criticized for its high number of executions, many of them public. Iranian criminal law is very unfair, especially when transferring responsibility for the future of the condemned into the hands of the victims’ families. It is an inhumane provision when it turns victims into executioners as relatives actively participate in the execution of the condemned by overturning the chair so that the hanging is effective. Social vengeance is the cultural background that allows the execution of the murderer personally.
Of course, we are not always capable of forgiving, especially in an extreme situation such as the violent death of a child. In these circumstances, it doesn’t matter if you are an enlightened and wealthy person or possess a primary culture and few resources. The difficulty isn’t there, but in the ability to empathize, to forgive, to love. That’s why I bring this real case here, to invite reflection on our personal capacity to not follow primary dictates before a request for forgiveness, and to grant it.
Forgiveness, a decision that heals, the attribute of the strong of heart because they are capable of asking for it from the offended as well as accepting it when the offender has the humility to want to reconcile… Day to day is full of opportunities, alas, but pride weighs heavily. Perhaps it would help us if we kept more present that the exercise of forgiving and accepting forgiveness is an essential part of the nature of God.
Gabriel Mª Otalora
English version translated with AI