On the 18th November 2005 police officer Sharon Beshenivsky was shot dead during a bungled robbery in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. She didn’t have a chance. Shot at almost point-blank range, she was a very new recruit to the force and was not expecting any firearms to be involved in the altercation. She was dispatched to investigate a disturbance at a travel agent’s shop within shouting distance of her own police station.
"Woof!" erm no I mean "meow!"
One of the men responsible escaped from Heathrow Airport wearing a niqab, an extreme form of female Islamic attire known to you and me as a “black bell tent with peep-hole”. He was allowed to go through customs at the airport to board his plane completely unchallenged. Happily he returned and is now an invite at one of Her Majesty’s correctional institutions.
It was not the first time such a thing had happened. In 1998, Fawzi Mustapha Assi, who was accused of smuggling night vision goggles and other military equipment to Hezbollah in Lebanon, fled from Detroit to Canada, where he was working as an engineer for Ford Motor Company, by wearing a niqab.
It was amusing then, to read the story in the Mail Online today about a French secret service agent, Herve Jaugbert, who supposedly escaped from the Dubai police by using the same sort of get-up. He was able to cover up diving air tanks with the garment and make a clean getaway by walking down to the water’s edge and swimming out to the only patrol boat in the area, disabling it and then making his way by dinghy to outside Dubai’s territorial waters where he was picked up by another French agent in a yacht.
Quite how credible the story is I don’t know. It sounds like it should be stamped with a large warning “Only to be taken with a bucket full of salt”. Funny nevertheless to think that the Dubai authorities may have been hoisted with their own petard. See the original Mail article for some great pictures.
See:
“French 007 tells of great escape from Dubai wearing a wetsuit under a burka”
(Mail Online 24.08.09)
Filed under: Islam, Bradford, Dubai, Fawzi Mustapha Assi, Herve Jaugbert, Mustaf Jama, Muzzaker Shah, Niqab, Sharon Beshenivsky, Yusaf Jama
The Emperor Wears No Clothes 
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