Lille (France): French police fined a woman
for driving while wearing an Islamic veil, just weeks after a
similar incident sparked a major political row, officials said
on Thursday.
Motorbike police carrying out random alcohol tests
stopped the 23-year-old French national on a minor road near
the northern town of Maubeuge yesterday, officials said.
They at first mistook her for a masked man but when they
saw she was wearing a niqab -- a veil that leaves only the
eyes exposed -- they fined her 35 euros for driving with a
reduced field of vision, a police source said.
The woman, who has not been named, had received her
provisional driving licence just two weeks earlier, the source
added.
In April, a major political row blew up in France after a
woman was fined in the western city of Nantes for driving
while wearing a niqab.
She accused the state of violating her human rights,
while the interior minister sought to have her husband, who he
said may be a polygamist with four wives and 12 children,
stripped of his French nationality.
PTI
First Published: Thursday, June 03, 2010, 21:16