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A London based human rights group, Amnesty International, has condemned a Saudi Arabian court ruling which reportedly ordered a young man to suffer the punishment of paralysis for a crime he committed ten years ago.

Ali al-Khawaher, 24, was reported to have spent a decade in prison after he had stabbed a childhood friend in the spine ten years ago, which left him paralyzed from the waist down, according to the Saudi Gazette. Khawaher was waiting to be surgically paralyzed unless his family could pay one million Saudi riyals to the victim, the equivalent of $270,000.

Saudi Arabia allows eye-for-an-eye punishment for crimes but also allows victims to pardon convicts with the exchange of so-called blood money, based on the Islamic sharia law.

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

When asked, a government-approved Saudi human rights group did not respond to requests for comment on the Saudi Arabian court ruling.

Khawaher's 60-year-old mother said her son was juvenile at time of the offence when he was age 14. She said the victim had first demanded 2 million riyals to pardon her son and later reduced the blood money to 1 million riyals, according to the Arabic-language al-Hayat daily. "But we don't have even a tenth of this sum," she said.

While the period of time before the sentence was to be carried out was unclear, an unnamed philanthropist was trying to raise funds to pay the blood money for Khawaher's crime, reported the Arabic-language al-Hayat daily.  

Khawaher's case demonstrated the need for Saudi Arabia to review its laws to "start respecting their international obligations and remove these terrible punishments from the law," Amnesty demanded.

In the past, Saudi judges have ordered sharia punishments which include flogging, tooth extraction, eye gouging and even death in murder cases, according to Reuters.