December 31, 2021
A 45-year-old man in Tehran province has been sentenced to blinding, Mashreq News reports.
The punishment was handed down in accordance with the Iranian legal principle of qasas (retribution), in which those convicted of committing violent crimes that result in physical injuries can be subjected to retaliation-in-kind or “an eye-for-an-eye” punishments.
According to Mashreq, which is affiliated with Iran’s security agencies, the defendant in this case got into a fight with a neighbor in Fasham, a small city in Tehran province.
The other party, a 40-year-old man, was badly beaten and lost the sight in his right eye. The case was sent to Tehran’s criminal court after he lodged a complaint.
Blinding has been most commonly used against rejected suitors who have attacked the object of their affection by tossing acid in their faces, a surprisingly common offense in Iran.
But not all cases are caused by the love-lost. A man from Qorveh, Kurdistan province, was blinded in both eyes in November 2016 for throwing lime into the face of his four-year-old niece, blinding her.
