An eye for an eye, rules Iran court

[struggle4progress]

Angus McDowall
in Tehran

June 27. — An Iranian court has sentenced a man to have his eyes surgically removed for a crime he committed as a teenager 12 years ago. Amnesty International has condemned the sentence, reported in the Iranian daily Etemaad, but local human rights groups say these unusual punishments are hardly ever executed. <snip>

Punishments such as stoning have become much less common, since Iran’s Islamic judiciary agreed to suspend such sentences as part of a human rights dialogue with the EU.

Etemaad says the accused, identified only as Vahid, was 16 when he threw a bottle of acid at another man during a fight in a vegetable market in 1993. The top opened — Vahid insists accidentally — and blinded his victim in both eyes. A court said the crime should be judged as qisas (a category for which the Koran stipulates specific punishments) in this case an eye for an eye. The paper said the sentence was to pour acid on Vahid’s eyes, but an appeals court ruled it should be done surgically so as not to harm other parts of his face. <snip>

Human rights and legal specialists in Iran say unusual sentences are sometimes passed by Islamic courts, which are bound by rigid Koran injunctions for certain crimes. They, however, say these punishments are usually used as leverage for the amount of compensation to be paid by the offender to the victim. <snip>

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=8&theme=&usrsess=1&id=81190

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. Good Lord...

I am speechless.