Saudi Arabia’s Justice Ministry is denying reports that a judge ordered a man to be paralyzed in an eye-for-an-eye sentence over a stabbing.
A March 30 report in the Saudi Gazette said 24-year-old Ali Al-Khawahir stabbed his friend in the backbone when he was 14, causing him to be permanently paralyzed. The report said Al-Khawahir could avoid that sentence if he came up with around $226,000 to pay the victim.
The report sparked outrage from human rights groups worldwide.
“The ministry would like to announce that this is utterly incorrect, and in fact the judicial ruling was contrary to that. The judge had shied away from demanding this punishment,” the ministry said on its Twitter account Monday, according to Gulf News.
Ministry officials, however, did not clarify Al-Khawahir’s actual sentence.
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