(CNN) -- Amnesty International on Friday urged Saudi Arabian authorities not to paralyze a man as punishment for his having paralyzed someone else, allegedly during a fight.
The Saudi newspaper Okaz reported that the judge in the case had sent letters to several hospitals in Saudi Arabia asking if they could sever a man's spinal cord, as the man he allegedly stabbed had requested and, under sharia law, was his right to seek.
But such a punishment would amount "to nothing less than torture," said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, acting director of the organization's Middle East and North Africa Programme. "While those guilty of a crime should be held accountable, intentionally paralyzing a man in this way would constitute torture, and be a breach of its international human rights obligations".
The paralyzed man, 22-year-old Abdul-Aziz al-Mitairy, told Okaz that the accused stabbed him in the back with a large knife during a fight more than two years ago. "The accused confessed to the crime in front of police, resulting in a general sentence of seven months," he told the newspaper.
During that time, the court in the northwest province of Tabuk debated how to carry out the surgery the paralyzed man was seeking as punishment for his alleged attacker, news reports said. CNN
