A young pregnant Muslim woman, who was allegedly attacked in the street for wearing a veil has lost her baby, her lawyer announced on Monday.
According to reports in the French media, the woman, who was four months pregnant, was assaulted in the Paris suburb of Argenteuil on June 13th. On Monday, the 21-year-old’s lawyer Hosni Maati told AFP that the woman had since suffered a miscarriage. “Her husband called me this afternoon. She lost the baby,” the lawyer said, before adding that the family were devastated by the tragedy and would not be making any further comment.
In reporting the attack to police she described how she was set upon on Thursday morning by two men in the middle of the street, just after she had finished talking to her mother on the telephone. She initially blamed the attack on two “skinheads”, saying the two men “ripped the veil” from her head and tore part of her clothing. The alleged assault on the woman came just three weeks after another veiled Muslim woman in Argenteuil was targeted in a similar manner.
In a statement sent to AFP on Monday, the Coalition against Racism and Islamophobia expressed “condolences and solidarity with the family” and its “concern and great anger over the tragedy”. “The wave of attacks and Islamophobic incidents require a strong and uncompromising response from the government, which must express its solidarity with all victims, not just those which the interior minister deems worthy to receive,” the statement added.
See also “Islamophobie: l’heure est grave”, CCIF, 18 June 2013