AN IRANIAN WOMAN who was blinded and seriously disfigured when a university classmate threw acid on her has pardoned her attacker in a last-minute reprieve before he was due to be blinded as a punishment for the attack.

The AFP reports that under sharia law, Majid Movahedi was sentenced to be punished through ‘qesas’, or ‘an eye for an eye’ style of justice. He attacked his classmate after she repeatedly refused his offer of marriage.

Ameneh Bahrami told state news agency ISNA that she “struggled for seven years for this verdict to prove to people that the person who hurls acid should be punished through qesas, but today I pardoned him because it was my right”.

She said that in the Koran, God says pardon is greater than qesas.

Earlier, she had said she wanted to personally drop acid into the eyes of her attacker to “make sure other women will not suffer like me”. She has undergone at least 17 operations since being seriously injured by Movahedi in 2004.

Movahedi was due to be blinded while unconscious at an Iranian hospital.

Prosecutors say that Bahrami is seeking ‘blood money’, or compensation, for the attack. She previously said that she wanted to be paid €2 million to secure her future.