A Saudi Arabian court has ruled that a man should be paralysed as punishment for a crime which resulted in the victim being confined to a wheelchair.

The ruling, which has been condemned by human rights group Amnesty International, says that Ali al-Khawaher, 24, should be paralysed surgically unless his family pays one million Saudi riyals (€207,850) to the victim.

According to Amnesty Khawaher has spent 10 years in jail waiting to be paralysed.

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The verdict, which was reported in the Saudi Gazette newspaper last week, is an example of Islamic sharia law, which allows eye-for-an-eye punishment for crimes but also allows victims to pardon convicts in exchange for so-called blood money.

The verdict has been condemned by Amnesty, which said it had only recently learned of the man's sentence. According to reports Khawaher had stabbed a childhood friend in the spine during a dispute a decade ago, paralysing him from the waist down.

"Paralysing someone as punishment for a crime would be torture," Ann Harrison, Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director, said in a statement.

"That such a punishment might be implemented is utterly shocking, even in a context where flogging is frequently imposed as a punishment for some offences, as happens in Saudi Arabia," she added.

Saudi judges have in the past ordered Sharia punishments that included flogging, tooth extraction, eye gouging and - in murder cases - death.

Amnesty claims that the paralysis sentence would contravene the UN Convention against Torture to which Saudi Arabia is a state party.