Maliki, who was spared the executioner's sword during what he thought would be his final hour, is still coming to terms with the fact that he has been pardoned. “I felt I'd died 60 minutes before the execution. I could not breathe. I closed my eyes and envisaged the strike of the sword, praying to Allah with my heart filled with fear,” Al-Maliki said. “The execution committee arrived at 7 A.M., and asked me to write my will.” “They put me in a car. I could not sense anything of what was going on around me. My emotions were mixed between fearing death and feeling regret for the crime I'd committed against a Muslim. I held my copy of the Qur'an and tried to read the last verses of my life.” The father of Al-Maliki's victim arrived at the execution square near Al-Jaffali Mosque and shouted out that he had pardoned his son's killer. Al-Malki said he fainted and woke up half an hour later in prison. “I heard the father shout when I was seeing nothing but death,” Al-Malki said from inside Jeddah's Briman prison. Al-Maliki thanked Prince Khaled Al-Faisal, Emir of Makkah Region, who had interceded on his behalf and thanked his pardoners for their “courage and humanity.”
