Women fined for wearing veil

A French court has fined two Muslim women for wearing full-face veils in public, the first time a judge has imposed punishment under a "burqa-ban" law that has become a legal and cultural battleground across Europe.

One of the women pledged immediately to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights to overturn the ban, which President Nicolas Sarkozy says protects women and guarantees equality but opponents argue violates human rights and panders to xenophobia.

Only a tiny percentage of French Muslim women wear full-face veils. But the law, which took effect in April, has become a focus of debate in mainly secular Europe, where right-wing parties hostile to Muslim immigration are gaining support.

The Strasbourg-based European Court can consider whether to overturn the French law now that a French court has enforced it.

A ruling in Strasbourg could have an impact in other EU countries which are considering similar laws.

"(This) violates European laws. For us the question isn't the amount of the fine but the principle. We can't accept that women are sentenced because they are freely expressing their religious beliefs," said Hind Ahmas after being fined R1300.

"We are going to launch the necessary appeals to bring this before the European Court and obtain the cancellation of this law, which is, in any case, an illegal law," she said.

A second woman, Najate Naitali, was fined R900 in absen- tia by a court in Meaux, near Paris. Ahmas said she would also appeal her sentence in a French court with the backing of French businessman Rachid Nekkaz, who has pledged to pay all fines imposed under the ban.

The two women had turned up at Meaux town hall in May wearing veils to offer a birthday cake to mayor Jean-Francois Cope, who is head of Sarkozy's conservative UMP party and helped push the ban through parliament.

In the five months since the ban came into force, several women were asked by police officers to remove veils and one paid a fine issued on the spot, but no court had enforced the law.

The ban, the first of its kind in Europe, makes public wearing of the Arabic-style niqab, which leaves only the eyes uncovered, and Afghan-style burqa, which conceals the face behind a cloth mesh, liable to a fine of up to R1650 or lessons in French citizenship.

The law has been denounced by Muslims abroad as impinging on religious freedom, but has met only a limited backlash in France, a strictly secular country where fewer than 2000 women out of a five million-strong Muslim community hide their faces.

Ahmas said she was "insulted every day". -