Police in the suburbs of Paris are working to restore order after hundreds of Muslims went on a rioting spree to protest the simple identity check of a Muslim woman who was wearing a full-face Islamic veil.
It is against the law to wear the face-covering niqab or the body-covering burqa in public spaces in France; violators are subject to fines of up to €150 ($200).
The latest round of violence erupted the evening of July 19 in Trappes, a gritty suburb situated 30 kilometers (20 miles) southwest of Paris. Trappes has 30,000 inhabitants, many of whom are Muslim immigrants.
Police say a crowd of possibly 400 Muslims gathered outside the Trappes police station in response to the arrest on July 18 of a man who had assaulted a police officer during an identity check on his wife, who was entirely veiled.
The niqab-wearing woman in question is 20-years-old; her 21-year-old husband, a convert to Islam, reportedly objected to the policeman interrogating his wife, and allegedly tried to strangle him, an act that lead to his arrest. Muslims insist the man was provoked.
After police in Trappes rejected Muslim demands to release the husband, the mob went on a rampage, throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at police, pelting police with firecrackers from rooftops, burning cars and trucks and destroying public property, including several bus stops, before being repelled by riot police.
A nine-minute video on YouTube shows police helicopters buzzing overhead amid burning cars and trash bins, as well as a building that was torched. Photos of the unrest can be viewed here and here.
Although no one died in the disturbances, five people were injured, including four police officers and a 14-year-old boy, who lost his eyesight from a projectile. » | Soeren Kern | Thursday, July 25, 2013
