Ruling to paralyse offender ‘torture’
Washington – A Saudi Arabian court has reportedly ruled a 24-year-old man should be paralysed as punishment for a knife attack that confined a childhood friend to a wheelchair.
Amnesty International has condemned the sentence as ‘‘torture’’.
Ali al-Khawaher, who was aged 14 when the attack took place, is reported to have spent 10 years in jail waiting to be paralysed surgically unless his family pays compensation of 1 million riyals (NZ$323,000) to the victim.
Saudi Arabia applies Sharia, which means eye-for-an-eye punishment for crimes but allows victims to pardon convicts in exchange for ‘‘blood money’’.
‘‘Paralysing someone as punishment for a crime would be torture,’’ said Ann Harrison, Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa deputy director. ‘‘That such a punishment might be implemented is utterly shocking, even in a context where flogging is frequently imposed as a punishment for some offences, as happens in Saudi Arabia,’’ Harrison said.
Al-Hayat, a Saudi daily news- paper, said Khawaher’s mother claimed the victim had initially demanded 2 million riyals to pardon her son but later reduced it.
‘‘But we don’t have even a 10th of this,’’ she said, adding she had begged many people over several years to help save her son from the terrible punishment.
‘‘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 paralysed.’’ She said she sympathised for her son’s friend, who has been completely paralysed since the incident and is unable to have children.
Al-Hayat said an unnamed philanthropist was trying to raise funds to pay the blood money, but it was not clear how much time remained before the sentence was to be carried out.
Amnesty International said the case demonstrated the need for Saudi Arabia to review its laws to ‘‘start respecting their international obligations and remove these terrible punishments from the law’’.
Saudi judges have in the past ordered Sharia punishments that include tooth extraction, flogging, eye gouging and – in murder cases – death.
Amnesty International said a similar sentence of paralysis was imposed in 2010 but it was unknown if it had been carried out.
If the paralysis sentencing is carried through, it would go against the United Nations Convention Against Torture, to which Saudi Arabia is a party.