A court has denied it issued a verdict to medically paralyse a man as punishment for similar injuries he allegedly caused during a fight, a Saudi newspaper reported on Monday.

"A verdict has not yet been announced on this case," the head of courts in the northwestern town of Tabuk, Sheikh Saud al-Yussef told the daily, Al-Riyadh.

However, the court has contacted several hospitals to convince the complainant that carrying out such an operation against the defendant would be medically impossible, Yussef said.

The Tabuk court has approached hospitals to ask if they could cut the man's spinal cord in retribution as requested by the victim in line with Islamic laws, according to Amnesty International.

One hospital reportedly said it would be possible to medically administer the injury at the same point on the spinal cord as the damage the man allegedly caused his victim using a cleaver in a fight more than two years ago.

But Yussef said the court's verdict only referred to the victim's right to claim financial compensation.

In a statement on Friday, the London-based Amnesty urged Saudi authorities not to carry out the operation, "which amounts to nothing less than torture ... and "a breach of its (Riyadh's) international human rights obligations."

The man, whose name has not been made public, has been sentenced to seven months in jail for the offence, after a trial in which he had no legal representation, according to Amnesty.

Under its Islamic laws, Saudi Arabia regularly sentences convicts to various forms of corporal punishment to fit the crime.