Get this: A man in Saudi Arabia is waiting for a sentence in which he is to be forcibly 'paralysed' as punishment for a crime which left his victim in a wheelchair.
The man, Ali al Khawaher, was 14 years old when he stabbed a friend in the spine, causing him to be paralysed from the waist down. He has been in jail for 10 years waiting to be paralysed too, and is now 24.
The punishment is to be carried out surgically, unless his family can cough out one million Saudi Riyals (about $271,206.00) to the family of his victim.
In Saudi Arabia, their form of Sharia law allows eye-for-eye punishment for crimes, however, victims are allowed to pardon offenders in exchange for monies paid, called blood money.
The sentence which was passed down in the eastern town of Al Ahsa, is called a qisa, which means retribution.
Bodies the world over have condemned the punishment, notable among them is Amnesty International. They're calling it torture, and say it contravenes the UN Convention against Torture, to which the Saudi government is a state party.
Now it might surprise you to know (then again, it might not), that Saudi Arabia's Sharia law allows forms of punishment for crimes which range from flogging, to tooth extraction, eye-gouging, and even death. . . for murder cases.
Death we know about. . . Tooth extraction, that's weird. . . Eye-gouging. . . that's just gross!
. . . But forcible paralysis?. . . That's just sick.
The Arabic-language al Hayat daily quoted Khawaher's 60-year-old mother as saying her son was a juvenile the time of the offence. She said the victim had demanded two million Riyals to pardon her son and later reduced this to one million.
"But we don't have even a tenth of this sum," she said.
This guy has been waiting for 10 years to have the use of his legs taken away from him. . . ??????
Again I say. . . That's just sick!
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