Interesting Story Related to Burqas and the Law

The Sydney Morning Herald reports on this. Apparently, Carnita Matthews filed a complaint with the police, alleging that a Sydney police officer who was trying to pull her over tried to rip off her burqa to check her identity. But an in-car camera seemed to show that she wasn’t telling the truth. She was then prosecuted for making a false statement to the police.

But the complaint was filed by someone wearing a burqa and (according to the newspaper’s paraphrase of the judge’s decision) “the signature on the declaration was different to the one on Mrs Matthews’s licence.” The judge therefore said that, ”I am not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that she made the complaint,” though he also concluded that “even if I was [satisfied as to the complainant’s identity,] … I would not be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that it was knowingly false,” presumably because he thought she might have been honestly mistaken about the officer’s intentions.

The Herald articles goes on to say that, “The Police Minister, Mike Gallacher, said he would ask the Police Commissioner, Andrew Scipione, to recommend strategies to improve identification standards. Laws would be ‘tidied up’ to allow alternative identification methods, such as the taking of fingerprints, for people who for social or religious reasons, could not show their face.” It’s not clear how those methods would work in situations where the identity needs to be checked more quickly than is possible with fingerprints (though I should acknowledge that visual checks of identity have their own imperfections).

9News (Australia) reports that there were “violent scenes outside the Local Downing Centre courts, where a large group of [the defendant’s] supporters clashed with police and media.” Thanks to Opher Banarie for the pointer.

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