01 March 2018

Muslim women win payout after New York police forced them to remove headscarves

The city of New York on Wednesday agreed to pay $180,000 to three Muslim women forced by police to remove their headscarves to have mugshots taken, officials said.

Each of the women is to receive $60,000 after the settlements were finalised in a Brooklyn federal court earlier this week, their lawyer Tahanie Aboushi said.

Two of the them were arrested in 2015 and one in 2012. All three incidents took place in Brooklyn, New York's most populous borough, she added.

The women sued the city and the New York Police Department, the largest city police force in the United States, which was represented by the city's law department.

New York police have since changed their guidelines to give detainees wearing a religious head covering the option of having their photograph taken in private by a police officer of the same gender. [SBS NEWS] Read more