With a little help from CAIR, a Minnesota Muslim woman is now $120,000 richer. The 57-year-old Muslim woman settled a lawsuit she filed against Ramsey County after she was arrested and forced her to remove her hijab for a mug shot.

Much of Ramsey County is situated in the 5th District in Minnesota which is represented by the anti-Semitic, freshman Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN).

The Gateway Pundit reports – A judge issued a warrant for Aida Shyef Al-Kadi’s arrest after she missed a court hearing after she was ticketed for a traffic offense.

Al-Kadi filed a lawsuit claiming the county “violated her constitutional rights and discriminated against her for her religious beliefs” for forcing her to remove her hijab in front of a male jail guard.

According to the Guardian – A Minnesota Muslim woman has received $120,000 to settle her lawsuit alleging she was forced to strip in jail and remove her hijab for a booking photo over a traffic offense, the woman and her attorneys said Tuesday.

Aida Shyef Al-Kadi appeared with her attorneys at the Minneapolis headquarters of the Council on American-Islamic Relations to announce the settlement approved last month.

Al-Kadi, 57, said her treatment at the Ramsey County jail in August 2013 was “one of the most humiliating and harmful experiences” of her life.

“I knew that I did not want any other Muslim woman to experience what I did,” she said.

When Al-Kadi turned herself in, she said, she was told to remove her hijab and abaya, a long dress that covered her body, in front of male jailers. When she objected, she said, she was removed from the area and taken to a holding cell, where she removed her hijab in front of a male jailer.

She said she agreed to remove her headscarf for her booking photo after being told that the photo would never be released to the public. But months later, she found it on a third-party website that charges users to take down the photos.

After taking the photo, the officers gave her a bedsheet to use as a hijab. Al-Kadi eventually was told to remove her abaya and change into a jail uniform, while two female officers watched her. Ramsey county policy says that misdemeanor inmates such as Al-Kadi “will not be viewed without clothing,” according to court records.

Under the settlement, the jail has put in place specific rules about how to accommodate inmates with religious headwear when taking booking photos. The county also agreed to destroy all hard copies and delete any electronic copies of Al-Kadi’s booking photo.

 

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