Woman fined €500 for wearing burqa in Italy

ITALIAN police fined a woman €500 for wearing a full Islamic veil – the first punishment of its kind in Italy, but the latest in a wave of sanctions against the burqa in Europe.

The 26-year-old Tunisian woman was walking in a street in the northwestern city of Novara on Monday when she was stopped by a patrol, local police said.

“City police ticketed her last night and she will have to pay a €500 fine,” Novara municipal police official Mauro Franzinelli said. “As far as I know this is a first in Italy.”

The woman was stopped by police outside a post office as she was walking with her husband.

The husband produced identity documents for the couple but refused demands by the male officers for the woman to lift her veil so she could be identified. Police then called in another patrol which included a woman officer to carry out the face check.

Franzinelli, who is also a local official for the anti-immigration Northern League, said the city had adopted a decree in January banning the burqa in public.

Novara is a stronghold of the Northern League, a key party in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right government.