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Woman Blinded by Spurned Man Invokes Islamic Retribution
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"After some operations, she could at least see some shadows," Medel said. "But we needed to do more work on her."
In August 2005, almost a year after the attack, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president, and the payments for Bahrami's medical costs and her Barcelona apartment suddenly stopped.
Iran's ambassador to Spain at the time, Morteza Alviri, said he had nightmares after meeting Bahrami. "I felt so sorry for her. I tried to do what I could," he said. But when Ahmadinejad changed several ambassadors, supporters of the previous government, Alviri was the first to leave. "I don't know what happened to Ameneh after that," he said.
Ahmadinejad's media adviser, Medhi Kalhor, said he could guess why the payments were cut off. "Did Mr. Khatami throw the acid? No. He shouldn't have paid for her out of the people's pocket," he said. "If Bahrami was an old man with an ingrown toenail, no one would speak of it. . . . There are so many people who need our help. We cannot just pay for everybody."
Bahrami eventually was evicted from her apartment, and members of a Spanish organization took her to a homeless shelter in Barcelona.
"After some days, I understood that I was surrounded by drug addicts, drunkards and prostitutes," she said. "I cried so hard -- what had I done to deserve all this?"
"It was a horrible, crazy place, where they had put her," said Amir Sabouri, president of the Iranian Friendship Association of New York, a charity that helps Iranians worldwide. Sabouri traveled to Spain to help Bahrami after hearing about her plight.
Soon after, Bahrami felt fluid dripping from her right eye.
"Unfortunately her eye, which was very weak, gave out," Medel said. "She must have caught some bacteria somewhere."
Bahrami returned to Tehran in June.
With little left to lose, Bahrami took the unusual step of asking the court for qisas, or eye-for-an-eye retribution as allowed under Islamic law.
Courts usually order families of the accused to pay "blood money" for the crimes. But Bahrami insisted on the punishment. She had several meetings with the head of Iran's judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, who tends to favor less strict interpretations of Islamic law.
