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TEACHER

Runaway teacher now faces sex charges

A British court has asked the French judiciary to add sexual charges to the warrant under which runaway British teacher Jeremy Forrest was extradited last month, judicial sources said.

Published: 6 November 2012 10:41 CET

The teacher, who triggered a week-long Europe-wide search when he ran away with a 15-year-old student, faces charges of child abduction in England.

He was arrested in the southwestern French city of Bordeaux on September 28 and extradited last month after a European arrest warrant was issued.

After hearing the young girl, who can not be named for legal reasons, a court in Maidstone, Kent, has asked that the warrant be changed to include sexual charges.

The 30-year-old maths teacher could now face 14 years in prison instead of seven.

Court sources in Bordeaux told AFP that the British request would be examined by the end of the month.

Existing European agreements stipulate that a suspect can only be tried on the charges listed in the arrest warrant.

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DISCRIMINATION

Muslim teacher wins €9,000 in Berlin discrimination case

The Muslim woman won an appeal before a Berlin-Brandenburg court on Thursday, and is set to receive nearly €9,000 after she was rejected from a teaching job due to her headscarf.

Published: 9 February 2017 16:27 CET
Muslim teacher wins €9,000 in Berlin discrimination case
File photo: DPA.

The Berlin-Brandenburg court on Thursday ruled on the side of the woman, who was denied a teaching job at a Berlin elementary school.

Head judge Renate Schaude said that the woman had been discriminated against and because her wearing a headscarf posed no danger to school peace, the discrimination against her was illegal. She was therefore awarded €8,680 in compensation.

She had lost her initial case last year as the Berlin school argued neutrality rules meant no one could wear religious symbols in schools.

But in 2015, Germany’s Constitutional Court ruled that general bans on state school teachers wearing headscarves were unconstitutional – unless headscarves were found to “constitute a sufficiently specific danger of impairing the peace at school or the state's duty of neutrality.”

After this major ruling, some states had to revise their regulations – also because they gave preferential treatment to Christian symbols.

But the Berlin-Brandenburg court ruled that Berlin’s neutrality rules were still constitutional. This law states that police, teachers, and justice workers may not wear any religious apparel.

A court in Osnabrück last month ruled very differently than the Berlin-Brandenburg court. In that case, a Muslim woman in Lower Saxony was also not allowed to teach due to her headscarf in 2013. But despite the 2015 Constitutional Court ruling, the lower Osnabrück court said that the school had made a valid decision based on the legal basis at the time.