Iranian woman blinded by acid attack pardons assailant as he faces same fate
Aug 02, 2011
from the article by Saeed Kamali Dehghan in The Guardian:
A woman blinded with acid in Iran has pardoned her attacker, a man who was scheduled to lose his sight in an eye for an eye punishment on Sunday.
Majid Movahedi, 30, had been taken to Tehran's judiciary hospital to be blinded with acid after being rendered unconscious, but Ameneh Bahrami, his victim, spared him at the last minute, Iran's semi-official Isna news agency reported.
Iran's judiciary had given the green light to the administration for the retributive punishment, which would have been the first blinding of a convict in the country, but human rights groups across the world called on Bahrami, who had asked for eye for an eye justice in the court, to pardon him.
Bahrami, who had refused to marry Movahedi, was disfigured and blinded by him when he threw a jar of acid in her face while she was returning home from work in 2004.
"I feel very good. I'm happy that I pardoned him," Isna quoted her as saying. "For seven years I've been trying to pursue retribution and to prove that the punishment for an acid attack is retribution but today I decided to pardon him. This was my right but in future the next victim might not do the same."
On Sunday, Bahrami asked for financial compensation instead of blinding Movahedi, an option she had previously refused to consider.
Speaking to Isna, Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, prosecutor general of Tehran, confirmed that Bahrami had pardoned Movahedi and described her move as a "courageous act".
Islam's Sharia law allows for qisas (retribution) but it also advises for clemency, especially before and during Ramadan, which starts on Monday in Iran. "Inflict the same life on him that he inflicted on me," she had told the court.
Bahrami said that international focus on the case was a factor she considered in pardoning Movahedi. "The second reason I decided to pardon him was because it seemed like the entire world was waiting to see what will happen," she said.
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