IRAN: MAN WHO SURVIVED EXECUTION GETS LIFE SENTENCE

February 5, 2014: an Iranian man who revived in the morgue after being hanged was sentenced to life imprisonment, Iran's Mehr news agency reported.
Alireza M., a 37-year-old father of two children, was hanged on 17 October 2013 in the city of Bojnourd for possessing a kilo of methamphetamine and was certified as dead by medics after lingering for 12 minutes from a rope tied around his neck.
He was sent to burial but a day later a worker in the morgue noticed steam in the plastic cover which Alireza was wrapped in. The revived man was sent to the hospital and treated.
The Iranian amnesty commission has agreed a request for forgiveness and the death sentence has been reduced to life imprisonment.
The revived man case raised challenges among Iranian jurists and clerics. While some of them believed that the death sentence is approved and Alireza should be executed again, other experts argued that he should not be executed while the execution was implemented once.
Earlier, head of Iran's judiciary, Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani said that according to the Iranian rules the death sentence of Alireza should be implemented, but from the emotional viewpoint the sentence is better to be reduced to life imprisonment. (Sources: trend.az, 05/02/2014)