An extensive campaign by people of Nour Township (Mazandaran Province) in preventing execution of Balal, 26, and their jubilation in saving him from execution at the last moment on Tuesday, April 15, demonstrates the general revulsion of Iranian people for the anti-human laws and decrees of the mullahs’ regime.
While on April 14 the henchmen had prepared the gallows in front of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Nour Township and the security forces and the criminal public prosecutor were prepared to carry out the sentence, Balal escaped execution at the last moment when his private complainants (parents of the slain) forgave him. This matter gave rise to extensive jubilation of the spectators as well as all the whole people of this township. In confrontation with the mullahs’ regime, people of Nour had been working for months to save the life of this young man and at the time of his execution chanted slogans asking for the execution verdict to be stopped.
The anti-human clerical regime that is enraged and has gone berserk of consecutive condemnations for human rights violations in Iran is attempting to depict the criminal verdict of execution as ordained by the criminal law of Qisas and as a personal right and demand of the family of the slain. Mohammad-javad Larijani, head of the human rights body(!) in the mullahs’ judiciary, recently said: “West does not comprehend that Qisas is different from execution. In fact Qisas belongs to the complainant that can have the sentence carried out or forgive the guilty.” (Revolutionary Guards news agency of Fars – April 9, 2014)
This is while according to the regime’s own statistics only a small percentage of the executions (less than 20%) are carried out based on Qisas and the rest of the executions have nothing to do with this law. Besides, on many instances the clerical regime even brazenly prevents the mercy for the guilty and opposes the campaigns that work for the forgiveness of prisoners.
The Iranian Resistance hails the freedom-loving people of Nour Township and urges the Iranian people to oppose and confront the criminal death sentence verdict that aims at fomenting vengeance and hostility amongst the people in order to strengthen the clerical regime’s heinous yoke and calls on the Western governments to precondition any political or economic relations with this medieval regime to the cessation of executions and the improvement of the situation of human rights instead of closing their eyes to the escalating trend of executions and the deplorable condition of human rights in Iran.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
April 18, 2014
