An Iranian court has sentenced two men and a woman to losing an eye under the law of retaliation, after convicting them of causing their victims to lose the use of one eye, local media reported on Tuesday.
The three Iranians were “sentenced to lose an eye under the law of retaliation in three separate cases”, said Hamshahri, the Tehran City Hall daily, without specifying the date of the sentences.
The law of retaliation is most often applied in Iran in murder cases and the family of the victim must expressly claim it.
In a first case, a young woman threw acid on her neighbor who lost her eye following an argument in 2011, according to the newspaper. She was sentenced to lose her right eye, jail and a fine, a verdict upheld by the Supreme Court.
In the second case, a man in 2017 stabbed a relative who lost an eye.
And in the third, in 2018, a man shot a hunting weapon at a friend who lost sight in his left eye.
According to Hamshahri, “these files were forwarded to the Tehran Criminal Prosecutor’s Office to prepare for the application of the sentence”.
Amnesty International and numerous human rights organizations have repeatedly denounced this type of punishment as cruel and tantamount to torture.