February 14-2014
An Iranian man who revived in the morgue after being hanged three months ago will not be hanged again but has been re-sentenced to life imprisonment.
Alireza M., a 37-year-old father of two, was hanged October 17 in Bojnurd in Khorasan North province for possessing a kilo of methamphetamine.
He was certified as dead by medics after hanging for 12 minutes.
The next morning, a worker in the morgue where the body was awaiting burial noticed breath moisture inside the plastic cover in which Alireza was wrapped. The revived man was sent to the hospital where he recovered.
That set off a debate, primarily among clerics, over whether the man should be re-hanged (on the argument that he was not properly hanged the first time), freed (the same as someone who survives a stoning is freed because the survival means the person has received the forgiveness of God) or jailed.
Now the Mehr news agency reports that the Iranian Amnesty Commission has agreed to a request for forgiveness and the death sentence has been reduced to life imprisonment.
The chairman of the Judiciary, Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani, said that according to Iranian rules the man’s death sentence should be implemented, but from the emotional viewpoint it would be better to reduce the sentence to life imprisonment.
It wasn’t known if there had ever been a similar case of a failed execution in the history of the Islamic Republic.
