The daily Sharq quoted her as saying the public uproar over the sentence has caused her “great anxiety” and put her under “great pressure” and now she needs time to think things over and regain her bearings.
Bahrami was blinded seven years ago when a rejected suitor, Majid Mohedi, threw acid in her face. Under the Islamic Republic’s qasas or retribution law, which embodies the Old Testament eye-for-an-eye punishment philosophy, Bahrami has the right to demand that her assailant be similarly blinded.
The Judiciary has been unsympathetic, although it has not explained why, and has constantly put her off. Bahrami says it was only as a result of her persistence that the courts finally granted her that right.
She was scheduled to drop acid in Mohedi’s eyes May 14 while he was under sedation. But when she arrived at the hospital to carry out the sentence, she was told the blinding had been postponed.
It was only five days later that Tehran Prosecutor Abbas Jafari-Dolatabadi told reporters the acid blinding had been postponed because unspecified “medical arrangements” had not been. He didn’t explain why the execution of the sentence had been scheduled in the first place if the arrangements were not in order.
“The sentence needs special medical arrangements because qasas demands an exact equivalent [of the sentence to the crime]. We are talking about blinding an individual, and the mechanism of carrying out this sentence is very important,” Dolatabadi said.
The planned blinding has received immense public attention ever since the few days before it was scheduled to be carried out. Many people have spoken out enthusiastically for the propriety of the punishment, while others have been vocal in denouncing it.
That debate appears now to have given Bahrami second thoughts and prompted her to ask for a delay until she can think through what she wants.
The Judiciary had previously said it had thought through how to design the blinding so it would be a close equivalent to what Bahrami suffered seven years ago. Under that design, Bahrami would have placed 20 drops of sulfuric acid into each eye while Mohedi was under sedation. He would have been blinded like her, but he would not have been disfigured like her.