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Egyptian Family Files Suit Against French School Over Headscarf Ban
ALEXANDRIA, Egypt, Feb 4 (News Agencies) - The family of an Egyptian girl who was ordered to remove her headscarf at a French school here has filed a lawsuit, demanding $10 million in damages, court papers revealed Sunday.
The family's lawyer, Ahmed Ramzi Helu, filed the suit against the school principal, the head of the Parent-Teacher Association, the region's governor, and Education Minister Hussein Kamal Bahaeddine, according to the documents.
The case involving the Lycee Champollion d'Alexandrie was scheduled to go again before the court in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria on Monday after the case opened on January 29th, sources close to the case said.
The parents of the 11-year-old girl, Azza Omar Mohammed Zaki, are demanding 10 million Egyptian pounds for their daughter, and the same sum for each of her three brothers, who were also excluded from the school.
The total value amounts to the equivalent of $10.3 million.
Zaki had gone to class several times wearing the headscarf, which is common in Muslim-majority Egypt, since school reopened on September 5th after the summer holiday, sources close to the school said.
But the sources said the Lycee invoked the ban, enforcing secular principles governing the French government's national education program, whether at home or abroad.
The teachers proposed later that Zaki follow her classes in separate study rooms, but the proposal was rejected and the PTA struck the Zaki family off its list, effectively expelling the four children.
"Teachers went on strike, the functioning of the school was interrupted. It was necessary to take a decision," a parent of a pupil said on condition of anonymity.
Under a 1994 French government decree, pupils are banned from wearing or carrying overt signs of a religious or political nature, although the council of state said wearing a scarf was not illegal so long as it did not affect the smooth running of the school.
The Lycee Champollion, which comes under French government authority, educates around 250 pupils from kindergarten to 12th grade who have French, Egyptian or other nationalities.
Some 1,300 students attend the Lycee francais du Caire, which has establishments in three separate neighborhoods of Cairo.
When the case erupted in September, the French embassy said in a statement that the "parents of pupils are perfectly acquainted with the" rules of French teaching establishments abroad.
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