Friday, January 20, 2017

A 14-year-old Muslim girl who claimed that she was pushed in front of a train simply for wearing a headscarf has been challenged after police checked CCTV tapes

The girl, identified only as Sinem, claimed on social media that she had been called a terrorist and was pushed onto the tracks by a man who had taken offence at her headscarf at a railway station in the Austrian capital of Vienna. She told an online anti-racism forum that she was only saved at the last second by another man who pulled her onto the platform before the S-Bahn train arrived at Wien-Döbling station. The girl, whose parents are originally from Turkey, said that she was taken to hospital with minor injuries and her parents filed a criminal complaint after hearing what had happened. Vienna police spokesman Irina Steirer said that officers had searched through tapes of CCTV cameras on the platform and found no trace of the incident that the girl described. She said: "We have looked through the CCTV and at the time when the incident is alleged to have occurred nothing can be seen on the records. Both the alleged victim and the accused are captured on CCTV, but nothing ever happens and they are both simply seen getting on the train." The original claim was widely reported in the Austrian media and one anti-racism group blamed Austrian Foreign and Integration Minister Sebastian Kurz for having called for a ban on civil servants wearing headscarves.

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