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Eye-for-eye justice

A man who blinded a woman in an acid attack after she spurned his marriage proposals has been sentenced to the same punishment, in a literal application of Iran’s sharia eye-for-an-eye laws.

In a highly unusual judgment, Tehran province criminal court ordered Majid Movahedi, 27, to be blinded in both eyes from drops of acid in response to a plea from his victim, Ameneh Bahrami. The punishment is legal under the sharia code of qisas, which allows retribution for violent crimes. The court also ordered Movahedi to pay compensation to the victim. Bahrami was left horrifically disfigured after Movahedi threw a jar of acid in her face as she walked home from work in a busy Tehran neighbourhood in October 2004. She had previously complained to police about being threatened and harassed by Movahedi, who she had known while they were both university students, but had been told no action could be taken.

Since the attack, Bahrami has undergone 17 operations, some by surgeons in Spain, in a vain attempt to reconstruct her face. Her injuries led to the loss of one eye and left her blind in the other.

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