61 arrested over banned Paris Muslim veil protest
PARIS – Police on Saturday arrested 61 people — including 19 women — for attempting to hold an outlawed Paris protest against France's pending ban on face-covering Islamic veils, a top police official said. Fifty-nine people were detained while trying to demonstrate at Place de la Nation in eastern Paris, as were two others while traveling there from Britain and Belgium, said Nicolas Lerner, chief of staff for the Paris police chief. The arrests come amid in a rising, if small, groundswell of controversy over Monday's start of an official ban of garments that hide the face, which includes Muslim veils such as the slit-eyed niqab and the full face-covering burqa. Women who disobey the law risk a fine, special classes and a police record. The demonstrators rallied in defiance of a ban of the protest ordered Friday by Paris police on the ground that a Muslim group's call for the rally was "clearly an incitement to violence and racial hatred," said Lerner.