Muslim women body-searched by male Russian police officers
AFP
April 26, 2005
VLASIKAVKAZ, RUSSIA -- A group of young women students who had formed a Koran-reading group at their university in the Russian Caucasian republic of Kabardino-Balkaria were harassed and detained by male police officers, who subjected them to body searches, one of the women said.
Mufti Nafigulla Ashirov, a religious official in charge of Muslims in the Asian parts of Russia, denounced the incident on Moscow Echo radio on Sunday.
One of the women said that she and eight other young women had been detained and questioned for eight hours by police in Nalchik, the capital of the southern republic.
She and her comrades had applied to the rector of the Kabardino-Balkaria state university two months ago to be given a room for their Koran-reading sessions, but had received no answer, she said.
The women, who are studying biology, physics and the humanities, had therefore decided ...
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