Maubeuge, France - FRENCH police fined a woman for driving while wearing an Islamic veil, just weeks after a similar incident sparked a major political row.
Motorbike police carrying out random alcohol tests stopped the 23-year-old French national on a minor road near the northern town of Maubeuge.
They at first mistook her for a masked man but when they saw she was wearing a niqab - a veil that leaves only the eyes exposed - they fined her 35 euros ($51) for driving with a reduced field of vision, a police source said.
The woman, who has not been named, had received her provisional driving licence just two weeks earlier, the source added.
In April, a major political row blew up in France after a woman was fined in the western city of Nantes for driving while wearing a niqab.
She accused the state of violating her human rights, while the interior minister sought to have her husband, who he said may be a polygamist with four wives and 12 children, stripped of his French nationality.
The Islamic veil has become a political sore point in France.
President Nicolas Sarkozy's government is pushing ahead with a legal ban on wearing full-face veils such as the niqab or burqa in public, despite a warning from state judicial experts that such a law could be unconstitutional.