News Agencies – August 19, 2011
In a civil protest against Muslim face veil ban in France and Belgium, French businessman Rachid Nekkaz has set up a fund to pay fines for Muslim women who choose to don niqab in public. “I’m in favor of a law to convict a husband who forces a women to wear the niqab and who forces her to stay at home,” told reporters outside the courtroom in Belgium, “But I’m also for a law that lets these women move freely in the streets, because freedom of movement, just like any freedom, is the most fundamental thing in a democracy.”
Nakkaz, a 38-year-old real-estate businessman based in Paris, travelled to Belgium to pay 100 euros for two women fined in the first case in the country since the law was adopted there. Earlier he paid a 75 euro fine for a woman in the north-eastern French town of Roubaix.
