France issues first fine for woman in Islamic veil Published duration 12 April 2011

image copyright Reuters image caption Women can be taken to a police station if they refuse to remove their veils

French police say they have issued their first penalty to a woman for covering her face with an Islamic veil.

The woman was stopped in a shopping centre in Paris on Monday evening - the same day that a law banning face coverings in public came into force.

Police said they gave the 27-year-old woman a ticket that requires her to pay a 150-euro (£133) fine or register for citizenship classes within a month.

France is the first country in Europe to publicly ban the Muslim face veil.

Under the law, any woman - French or foreign - walking on the street or in a park in France and wearing a face-concealing veil such as the niqab or burka can be stopped by police and given a fine.

People forcing women to wear the veil face a much larger fine and a prison sentence of up to two years.

Two veiled women were briefly detained earlier on Monday - though police said it was not because of their veils but for joining an unauthorised protest and refusing to move on, and they were later released.

Guidelines issued to police say they should not ask women to remove their veils in the street - if necessary they should escort them to a police station where they would be asked to uncover their faces for identification.

The French government says the face-covering veil undermines the basic standards required for living in a shared society and also relegates its wearers to an inferior status incompatible with French notions of equality.