|
French School In Egypt Ordered To Pay Damages
ALEXANDRIA, Egypt, March 22 (News Agencies) - A French school here has been ordered to pay $160,000 in damages to the family of an Egyptian girl who was expelled for wearing an Islamic headscarf, both sides said Thursday.
In a verdict handed down on Monday, the court also ordered the school to readmit Azza Omar Mohammed Zaki, 11, and her three brothers, who were also expelled, according to sources close to the school and the family's lawyers.
The lawyers of the Zaki family, New York-based Nabli Associates, had demanded $10 million in damages and compensation for the case, which has shaken the Lycee Champollion school for the past seven months.
The French government was expected to appeal the verdict handed down by the Court of First Instance in Alexandria, a port city of around four million people on the Mediterranean Sea.
According to court documents, in filing the suit, the family's lawyers named the school's principal, the head of the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA), the region's governor, and Education Minister Hussein Kamal Bahaeddine, as responsible for events related to Azza's expulsion.
The court, however, found only the principal and the PTA liable, sources said.
The French government would end up paying the bill since the principal and PTA are under its authority, sources close to the school said.
Zaki had gone to class several times wearing the headscarf, which is common in Muslim-majority Egypt, since the fee-paying school reopened on September 5th after the summer holiday.
But the Lycee invoked a ban, enforcing secular principles governing the French government's national education program, whether at home or abroad.
Teachers at the school later proposed that Zaki follow her classes in separate study rooms. The proposal was rejected, and the PTA struck the Zaki family off its list, effectively expelling the four children.
Some 250 pupils from France, Egypt and other countries attend the school.
Under a 1994 French government decree, pupils are banned from wearing or carrying overt signs of a religious or political nature, although France's council of state said wearing a scarf was not illegal so long as it did not disrupt the functioning of the school.
In a statement, Nabli Associates rejected what it said was the school's argument that it was diplomatically immune from legal action in Egypt because it was set up under a bilateral treaty of cultural exchange.
The firm argued the school is "in the business of selling academic services to the Alexandria population and thus is exercising a commercial activity not covered by the Vienna convention" on matters of diplomatic immunity.
The firm said the girl's family had hired it to first negotiate with the French Embassy, and failing that, to pursue litigation based on similar discrimination cases that were presented to courts in the United States.
It said the case can only be legally approached through the general principles of freedom of expression, freedom of religion and other anti-discrimination international treaties, and the Egyptian constitution.
|
