Saudi judge mulls ’spine for a spine’ punishment

LONDON - A judge in Saudi Arabia has asked doctors in the country whether they can damage a man’s spinal cord as a tit-for-tat punishment after he was convicted of paralysing a fellow countryman in a cleaver attack.

The ultra-conservative desert Kingdom enforces Islamic law and on rare occasions metes out punishments based on the ancient code of an ‘eye-for-an-eye’, the Daily Mail said Friday, citing local media reports.

The judge in the northwestern province of Tabuk has sent letters to several hospitals seeking their advice on whether it is medically possible to render the attacker’s spinal cord non-functional.

King Abdullah, the Saudi monarch, has been trying to clamp down on extremist ideology and is said to be opposed to sentences such as the deliberate crippling of Abdul-Aziz Al-Mutairi’s un-named assailant.

One leading hospital said that it could not perform the operation, apparently on ethical grounds. The King Faisal Specialist Hospital - a leading medical facility in the Saudi capital Riyadh, said in a letter of response to the court that ‘inflicting such harm is not possible’.

Another hospital reportedly said it is possible to cut the spinal cord but it was not clear whether it is prepared to do so.

The punishment can be waived if the victim chooses to accept ‘blood money’ in reparation.

The same also applies in capital cases, such as murder. There have been several instances over the years where a convicted murderer’s life has been spared at the 11th hour when his victim’s family has eventually decided to show mercy.

But in this instance the victim, Al-Mutairi, is insisting that his attacker - who has not been named by Saudi media - suffer the same crippling injury.

Mutairi, 22, said the culprit had confessed in court to hitting him with a cleaver during a fight more than two years ago.

Such ‘eye for eye’ punishments are rarely carried out in Saudi Arabia, and Saudi reformists are infuriated when such sentences are passed.

‘No hospital will cut this man’s spinal cord. Any doctor who did could find himself in court,’ said a senior Saudi journalist.

‘This is part of an extremist tradition that has nothing to do with Islamic law which places a high value on mercy,’ he said.

Four 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 King Abdullah arrived in India on a state visit.

But ten 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.