The head of the Iranian judiciary, Ayatollah Larijani, is once again considering a “ghesas” sentence for a man convicted of blinding another man by throwing acid in his face.
The Shargh daily reported today that 25-year-old Mehdi has been convicted of “carrying out a vendetta against the uncle of another man’s wife in exchange for five hundred thousand toumans ($500).”
The accused reportedly entered Mohammad’s house five years ago and blinded him in both eyes by throwing acid in his face.
Mehdi reportedly told the court: “I accepted the task because I was an addict and, after receiving the money and buying a motorcycle, I threw acid on Mohammad’s face and I am very regretful of my actions.”
The Varamin court announced that blinding the convict was not an option and sentenced him to imprisonment and the payment of compensation. However, the sentence was challenged by the victim, Mohammad, and a Tehran penal court decided that the assailant should be blinded in a way that does not threaten his life.
The man who paid the assailant to carry out the crime has been sentenced to two years in prison and three years of exile.
Shargh reports that since the efforts to establish “peace and reconciliation” between the parties broke down, it is now up to Ayatollah Larijani to decide whether the blinding sentence will be carried out or not.
Earlier this year, Amaneh Bahrami, an Iranian woman who was blinded and disfigured by acid at the hands of Majid Movahed, a man whose romantic advances she had refused, convinced the Iranian judiciary to issue a blinding sentence for her assailant according to the provisions of ghesas. That is the Islamic tenet that proposes that a crime must be punished in kind.
Bahrami, however, chose to forgo the ghesas sentence, saying that she hoped her push for the sentence would stop such crimes from recurring in society.
