Casablanca - Football hooligans kicked a heavily pregnant woman wearing niqab in her stomach last Monday.
Casablanca – Football hooligans kicked a heavily pregnant woman wearing niqab in her stomach last Monday.
The despicable Islamophobic act took place in Barcelona’s central Old Town area where the victim was with her husband and children. Two men moved toward them and began insulting the women for wearing the niqab, according to the British tabloid, The Independent.
The verbal attack quickly developed into a violent physical assault against the husband when he reprimanded the attackers.
According to the police spokesperson’s statement quoted in the same news source, the wife wearing the niqab “tried to intervene between the aggressors and her partner … at that moment, of the attackers kicked the pregnant woman’s abdomen.”
Some passers-by who witnessed the incident shielded the victims and waited for the police to come to the crime scene.
The Spanish police arrested the two assaulters on charges of hate crime and inflicting physical harm.
The independent reported that investigations have revealed that the defendants are members of Brigadas Blanquizules, a far-right football group in Barcelona that has been banned from entering the stadium.
Fortunately, no serious harm was done to the pregnant woman or her unborn child, according to the paramedics who took the victim to the hospital for gynecological treatment.
The ban of the Niqab, a veil that covers all the face, which was decreed in 2010 in the city of Barcelona, does not apply to places that do not require ‘personal identification’ such as streets.
