French mayor: Australian burkini wearer was ‘indecent’

The right-wing mayor of a French Riviera beach town where bathers asked a burkini-wearing Australian to leave defends their complaints — calling her behavior “indecent.”

Sydney native Zeynab Alshelh “could have asked herself whether the people in the area weren’t still reeling from the jihadist attack that killed 86 people” in nearby Nice in July, Lionnel Luca says.

“She could not just innocently come to our beaches with religious garb that is the sign of the fundamentalism that killed us,” he says, calling the 23-year-old’s actions “pretty indecent.”

Alshelh told Australian television the bathers threatened to call the police unless she left the beach at Villeneuve-Loubet, even though a ban on the controversial full-bodied swimsuit had recently been overturned.

— AFP