‘Eye-for-an-eye’ punishment if ‘blood money’ is not paid
I suspect the crime rate in Saudi Arabia is relatively low.
SAUDI MAN WHO PARALYSED HIS BEST FRIEND IN KNIFE ATTACK FACES HAVING HIS SPINAL CORD SEVERED IN ‘EYE-FOR-AN-EYE’ PUNISHMENT
Ali Al-Khawahir was 14 when he stabbed his friend in the backbone and has been imprisoned for 10 years, but must now pay ‘blood money’
Mail Online
April 2, 2013
A Saudi man convicted of paralyzing his best friend in a knife attack is being threatened with having his spinal cord cut in a tit-for-tat punishment.
The ultra-conservative desert Kingdom enforces Islamic law and on rare occasions issues punishments based on the ancient code of an ‘eye-for-an-eye’.
Ali Al-Khawahir was 14 years old when he stabbed his friend in the backbone and has been imprisoned for 10 years.
He has been told that he will be sentenced to being fully paralysed himself unless he pays the victim blood money in a form of compensation, reported the Saudi Gazette.
Originally the victim requested 2 million Saudi Riyal - more than half a million U.S. dollars - but it was later reduced to 1 million.
His mother has begged people to contribute money to the fund.
'Ten years have passed with hundreds of sleepless nights. My hair has become grey at a young age because of my son’s problem.
'I have been frightened to death whenever I think about my son’s fate and that he will have to be paralyzed,' she said.
Saudi Arabia enforces strict Islamic law and occasionally doles out punishments based on the ancient legal code of an eye for an eye.
In 2010, Abdul-Aziz al-Mutairi, 22, was left paralyzed and subsequently lost a foot after a fight more than two years ago.
He asked a judge in north-western Tabuk province to impose an equivalent punishment on his attacker, his brother Khaled al-Mutairi told The Associated Press.
Such ‘eye for eye’ punishments are rarely carried out in Saudi Arabia, and Saudi reformists are infuriated when such sentences are passed.
Seven years ago a Saudi court pardoned an Indian man, Abdul Lateef Noushad, whose eye was to be gouged out.
He had blinded another man in a fight over money. The victim eventually pardoned the Indian after the case threatened to cause a diplomatic row. The reprieve came a day before Saudi’s King Abdullah arrived in India on a state visit.
But 13 years ago, an Egyptian worker had an eye surgically removed in a Saudi hospital as punishment for disfiguring a compatriot in an acid attack six years earlier.
That was said to be the first time in 40 years that a Saudi court had applied literally the principle of 'an eye for an eye', local media said at the time.
The Egyptian’s victim had refused a blood money offer of more than $130,000.
In 2008, an Iranian court sentenced a man to be blinded with acid after he did the same to a woman he was stalking. It is not clear if the punishment was carried out.
Human rights groups invariably describe such ‘eye for an eye’ punishments as 'abhorrent'.
They also say that trials in Saudi Arabia fall far below international standards.
Trials usually take place behind closed doors and without adequate legal representation.
The Kingdom has one of the highest execution rates in the world after China and Iran. The most common method of execution in Saudi Arabia is beheading. The sentences are usually carried out in public.
But King Abdullah, the Saudi monarch, insists he has been trying to clamp down on extremist ideology and improve the country’s forbidding image.
Last week Saudi authorities beheaded a murderer and crucified his body after he killed and raped a Pakistani national.
The kingdom's interior ministry announced the execution, stating that the man had murdered and sodomised another male. Both actions are punishable by death.
'The Yemeni citizen Mohammed Rashad Khairi Hussain killed a Pakistani, Pashteh Sayed Khan, after he committed sodomy with him,' said a statement carried by state news agency SPA.
Hussain was also convicted of robbery and carrying out a series of attacks.
The execution, in the southern city of Jizan, was followed by crucifixion, a punishment used by the ultra-conservative country for serious crimes.
Saudi Arabia have been criticised in the international community for its harsh punishments, including executions by beheading and firing squad.
There have been 28 people beheaded in Saudi Arabia this year.
In 2012, they executed 76 people, according to an AFP tally based on official figures, while the US-based Human Rights Watch put the number at 69.
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