The posting continued, “although he struggled for years to overcome his sorrow, he finally succumbed, and during the night of the 4th of January 2011, in his Boston residence, took his own life, plunging his family and friends into great sorrow.’’ 
 
 “It is with immense grief that we would like to inform our compatriots of the passing away of Prince Alireza Pahlavi,’’ according to the posting by his older brother, Reza Pahlavi. “Like millions of young Iranians, he too was deeply disturbed by all the ills fallen upon his beloved homeland, as well as carrying the burden of losing a father and a sister in his young life.’’ 
 
 Prince Ali-Reza Pahlavi was found inside his West Newton Street home by Boston police around 2 a.m. today, according to police and the posting on rezapahlavi.org. 
 
 The 44-year-old son of the late shah of Iran died early this morning inside his South End home after he allegedly shot himself, according to law enforcement officials and a Web posting by his brother. 
 
 The statement added, “Once again, we are joined with mothers, father and relatives of so many victims of these dark times for our country.’’ 
 
 Jake Wark, a spokesman for Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley, confirmed the identify of the body as Al-Rreza. 
 
 Al-Reza Pahlavi’s father was the shah of Iran and a close American ally. The shah was overthrown in the 1970s by a fundamentalist Islamic revolution that remains in power, bedeviling the current American administration with reported plans to produce nuclear weapons. 
 
 Ali-Reza was born in 1966 and has lived in the South End for many years, but has kept a low public profile. The Globe reported incorrectly earlier today that Pahlavi was a student at the Harvard Divinity School. In fact, Pahlavi enrolled in a doctorate program in Near Eastern languages and civilizations at Harvard in 1993 but did not complete his degree, according to the registrar's office of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. 
 
 His older brother, Reza Pahlavi, is a lawyer who lives in the United States and has taken a much more public role in opposing the continued control of his homeland. 
 
 A younger sister, Leila Pahlavi, died in a London hotel room in 2001 from an accidental overdose of prescription drugs,according to the Agence France Press. She also battled emotional problems for many years. 
 
 Boston police spokeswoman Elaine Driscoll said that “preliminary investigation suggests that the bullet wound was self-inflicted.’’ 
 
 Neighbors said Pahlavi was reserved and quiet. He bought the five-story brick rowhouse in 2001, according to city records, and renovated it. 
 
 Daniel Shannon, a doctor and scientist who lived across the street from Pahlavi, said he first met the prince in 1973 in his father's castle in Iran, where Shannon had gone with a small group of doctors and scientists to advise the shah, who wanted to build a medical science center. 
 
 At the time, Pahlavi was about 7 years old, curious, friendly and with an impressive knowledge of the United States, Shannon said. 
 
 Shannon said he was shocked to see Pahlavi again on West Newton Street years later, this time as his neighbor. 
 
 "He was the spitting image of his father," Shannon said. "I recognized him right away." 
 
 But the open child had grown into a reserved man whose face froze when Shannon brought up their first meeting in the 1970s. 
 
 "What I read in that is he didn't want to talk about it," Shannon said. "When I mentioned having known him as a child, the reserve turned to ice." 
 
 After that, Shannon and his wife, Marcia Lloyd, rarely saw him around the neighborhood. He would pull up in his black Porsche and dart inside the house. The only people the couple saw were another friend and a striking young woman who studied painting. 
 
 The wooden, Venetian blinds in the windows were always closed, Lloyd said. 
 
 He had placed satellite dishes with Arabic letters on the roof of the house so he could access Al Jazeera, but they disappeared about a year ago, Lloyd said. 
 
 "We've seen him so seldom that it was hard to know if someone was living there or not," Shannon said. "He might have come here to be in a place where he was a little anonymous." 
 
 Late this afternoon, the blinds remained closed. On West Newton street, a police cruiser idled as three men from the crime scene clean up company, Aftermath Inc., went back and forth from their van into Pahlavi's house holding plastic buckets and hoses. 
 
 An elderly man answered the door but told a reporter he could not comment. 
 
 John Tirman, a professor of international affairs at MIT in Cambridge, said the Pahlavi family has not played a major role in Iranian politics since the family left Iran, partly because the family was reviled by many Iranians because of the ruthlessness of the shah’s regime and the family’s extravagant lifestyle while in power. 
 
 “We don’t like what is in Iran right now,’’ Tirman said. “But what was there before was pretty nasty, too.’’ 
 
 Tirman said he did not know Ali-Reza Pahlavi personally. adding that many close followers of the Pahlavis relocated to the United States after the shah's fall from power. The largest concentration is in California. he said. 
 
 “It’s a very big community in the US, very well educated,’’ Tirman said. “Many Iranians have been quite successful in business and academia and elsewhere in the US. It’s not an exile community that had a head exactly, they were first among equals in that exile community.’’ ||||| The youngest son of the late shah of Iran was found dead Tuesday of an apparent suicide at his home in Boston, after he had "struggled for years to overcome his sorrow," his brother said. 
 
 FILE - In this March 30, 1979 file photo, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran, third from left, poses with his family while vacationing in the Bahamas. From left are daughter Leila Pahlavi, son Alireza... (Associated Press) 
 
 A Boston police cruiser drives past the South End home of Alireza Pahlavi in Boston late Tuesday afternoon, Jan. 4, 2011. Pahlavi, the youngest son of the late shah of Iran, was found dead Tuesday of... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Friday, April 15, 2005 file photo, Alireza Pahlavi is seen during Prince Rainier III's funeral procession, in Monaco. Pahlavi, son of the late shah of Iran, has been found dead of an apparent... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Friday, April 15, 2005 file photo, Iran's Farah Pahlavi, widow of Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, right, and her son Alireza Pahlavi, are seen during Prince Rainier III's funeral procession,... (Associated Press) 
 
 A Boston Police Officer walks up the front steps of the South End home of Alireza Pahlavi as a woman walks past in Boston, late Tuesday afternoon, Jan. 4, 2011. Pahlavi, the youngest son of the late shah... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Jan. 26, 1975, file photo, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran, center, sits with his children Princess Leila, left, and Prince Alireza, during a vacation in St. Moritz, Switzerland. Alireza... (Associated Press) 
 
 "Once again, we are joined with mothers, father and relatives of so many victims of these dark times for our country," the shah's oldest son, Reza Pahlavi, wrote on his website in announcing the death of his brother, Alireza Pahlavi. 
 
 Pahlavi, 44, died from a single gunshot wound that was apparently self-inflicted, said Jake Wark, a spokesman for the Suffolk District Attorney's office. 
 
 Boston police said officers responding to a 911 call found the man dead in his home in the city's South End neighborhood shortly after 2 a.m. Tuesday. A police spokesman did not know who made the call or whether it came from the home. 
 
 Fardia Pars, who is close to Reza Pahlavi, said by phone from Paris that Alireza Pahlavi went into a deep depression following his the death of his sister Leila in 2001, who was found in a London hotel room at age 31 after overdosing on barbiturates. 
 
 Alireza Pahlavi never recovered, Pars said. 
 
 "He became a different person," he said. 
 
 Pahlavi's depression "grew over time _ his departure from Iran, living in exile, the death of his father and then his sister to whom he was very close," said Nazie Eftekhari, who works in Reza Pahlavi's office in Washington and is a close family friend. 
 
 "The deaths were a huge blow to him," she said. 
 
 When Leila Pahlavi died, her mother said her daughter had been "very depressed." Her doctor had said she had a history of anorexia, bulimia and psychological problems. 
 
 Pars said Alireza's style even in taking his life was militaristic in nature, reflecting his royal background. "Like an army commander, he shot himself. He was a very disciplined man," Pars said. 
 
 Former Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic revolution. He fled Iran and wandered from country to country, ill with cancer, and eventually died in Egypt in 1980. 
 
 Alireza Pahlavi was born in Tehran in 1966 and attended school there until 1979, according to a brief biographical sketch on the website of his mother, the former empress Farah Pahlavi. 
 
 From 1979 to 1981, Pahlavi attended schools in New York and Cairo, and from 1981 to 1984 he attended Mount Greylock Regional High School in Williamstown, Mass. 
 
 Pahlavi studied music as an undergraduate at Princeton University and ancient Iranian studies as a graduate student at Columbia University. 
 
 He also did postgraduate work at Harvard University in ancient Iranian studies and philology. Pahlavi was not studying at the university at the time of his death, a Harvard spokesman said Tuesday. 
 
 A police officer was seen late Tuesday afternoon going in and out of Pahlavi's Boston apartment and speaking with family representatives, who would not talk to reporters. 
 
 A neighbor, Dan Phillips, 42, said he did not know Pahlavi personally but recognized his picture and described him as someone who was very social and "who always dressed very dapper." 
 
 "I would always see him walking around here and he used to wear blue jeans and a blazer," Phillips said. 
 
 Trita Parsi, the president of the National Iranian American Council, said in a statement that "the Iranian-American community was deeply saddened by the news of this tragedy. 
 
 "There are many divisions in the community, but on a day like this, I think we are all united in our sympathy with the Pahlavi family for their tragic and painful loss," Parsi said. 
 
 Reza Pahlavi, who is based in the U.S., has spoken out in opposition to Iran's clerical regime. It's not clear how much weight exiled opposition forces have inside Iran, nor how many Iranians support the idea of a return to monarchy. Pahlavi said in 2009 that that is not his goal. 
 
 "I'm not here to advocate anything but ... freedom and democracy for the Iranian people at first and I've determined this as my unique mission in life," he said at the time. 
 
 Pahlavi will head to Boston on Wednesday, Eftekhari said, and she expected his mother, who's in Paris, to go as well. 
 
 Eftekhari said the family asks to be allowed to mourn privately for a few days and that no funeral arrangements have yet been made. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writers Scheherezade Faramarzi in Beirut; Matthew Barakat in McLean, Va.; and Bob Salsberg and Russell Contreras in Boston contributed to this report. ||||| Convict had noose around his neck when victim's mother approached, slapped him in the face and spared his life 
 
 When he felt the noose around his neck, Balal must have thought he was about to take his last breath. Minutes earlier, crowds had watched as guards pushed him towards the gallows for what was meant to be yet another public execution in the Islamic republic of Iran. 
 
 Seven years ago Balal, who is in his 20s, stabbed 18-year-old Abdollah Hosseinzadeh during a street brawl in the small town of Royan, in the northern province of Mazandaran. In a literal application of qisas, the sharia law of retribution, the victim's family were to participate in Balal's punishment by pushing the chair on which he stood. 
 
 But what happened next marked a rarity in public executions in Iran, which puts more people to death than any other country apart from China. The victim's mother approached, slapped the convict in the face and then decided to forgive her son's killer. The victim's father removed the noose and Balal's life was spared. 
 
 Hosseinzadeh's mother slaps Balal. Photograph: Arash Khamooshi /Isna 
 
 Photographs taken by Arash Khamooshi, of the semi-official Isna news agency, show what followed. Balal's mother hugged the grieving mother of the man her son had killed. The two women sobbed in each other's arms – one because she had lost her son, the other because hers had been saved. 
 
 The action by Hosseinzadeh's mother was all the more extraordinary as it emerged that this was not the first son she had lost. Her younger child Amirhossein was killed in a motorbike accident at the age of 11. 
 
 "My 18-year-old son Abdollah was taking a stroll in the bazaar with his friends when Balal shoved him," said the victim's father, Abdolghani Hosseinzadeh, according to Isna. "Abdollah was offended and kicked him but at this time the murderer took an ordinary kitchen knife out of his socks." 
 
 Balal's mother, left and Hosseinzadeh's mother embrace after the execution was halted. Photograph: Arash Khamooshi/Isna 
 
 Hosseinzadeh Sr has come to the conclusion that Balal did not kill his son deliberately. "Balal was inexperienced and didn't know how to handle a knife. He was naive." 
 
 According to the father, Balal escaped the scene of the stabbing but was later arrested by the police. It took six years for a court to hand down a death sentence, and the victim's family deferred the execution a number of times. A date for execution was set just before the Persian new year, Nowruz, but the victim's family did not approve of the timing. 
 
 Hosseinzadeh said a dream prompted the change of heart. "Three days ago my wife saw my elder son in a dream telling her that they are in a good place, and for her not to retaliate … This calmed my wife and we decided to think more until the day of the execution." 
 
 Many Iranian public figures, including the popular TV sport presenter Adel Ferdosipour, had called on the couple, who have a daughter, to forgive the killer. Although they did so, Balal will not necessarily be freed. Under Iranian law the victim's family have a say only in the act of execution, not any jail sentence. 
 
 The chair on the gallows. Photograph: Arash Khamooshi /Isna 
 
 In recent years Iran has faced criticism from human rights activists for its high rate of executions. The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, accused Hassan Rouhani of doing too little to improve Iran's human rights, especially reining in its staggering use of capital punishment. 
 
 As of last week, 199 executions are believed to have been carried out in Iran this year, according to Amnesty, a rate of almost two a day. Last year Iran and Iraq were responsible for two-thirds of the world's executions, excluding China. 
 
 At least 369 executions were officially acknowledged by the Iranian authorities in 2013, but Amnesty said hundreds more people were put to death in secret, taking the actual number close to 700. 
 
 Iran is particularly criticised for its public executions, which have attracted children among the crowds in the past. Iranian photographers are often allowed to document them. 
 
 Bahareh Davis, of Amnesty International, welcomed the news that Balal had been spared death. "It is of course welcome news that the family of the victim have spared this young man's life," she said. "However, qisas regulations in Iran mean that people who are sentenced to death under this system of punishment are effectively prevented from seeking a pardon or commutation of their sentences from the authorities – contrary to Iran's international obligations." 
 
 She added: "It's deeply disturbing that the death penalty continues to be seen as a solution to crime in Iran. Not only is the death penalty the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment with no special deterrent impact, but public displays of killing also perpetuate a culture of acceptance of violence. 
 
 "Public executions are degrading and incompatible with human dignity of those executed. In addition, all those who watch public executions – which regrettably often includes children – are brutalised by the experience." 
 
 In October last year an Iranian prisoner who survived an attempted execution and was revived in the morgue was spared another attempt, though his family said he had lost mental stability and remained in jail.
– The youngest son of the late shah of Iran killed himself in his Boston home this morning, his family says. Alireza Pahlavi, 44, apparently shot himself, reports the Globe. “Like millions of young Iranians, he too was deeply disturbed by all the ills fallen upon his beloved homeland, as well as carrying the burden of losing a father and a sister in his young life," said a family statement. It refers to his sister Leila, who died of a drug overdose in 2001. Pahlavi's father, an American ally, was overthrown in 1979 and died the following year in exile in Egypt. A family friend says Alireza Pahlavi never recovered from the death of his sister and that his depression "grew over time," reports AP. He had studied music and history at Princeton, then did postgraduate work at Harvard. He kept a relatively low-key profile, unlike his brother Reza Pahlavi, a US attorney who frequently speaks out against the Iran regime. Click for more on Alireza Pahlavi.