British Reaction to Murder Suspect’s Burqa-Clad Escape Dampened by Season

BRADFORD, England -- Fogbound airports, a Christmas shopping frenzy and sordid headlines about a serial prostitute strangler conspired to blur the disclosure in Britain that a Somali man wanted over the murder of a police officer escaped the country disguised as a veiled Muslim woman.

To the comfort of the London government and immigration authorities, national preoccupation with seasonal festivities has failed to trigger the level of controversy that ensued when a Muslim woman recently lost her job for refusing to remove her veil while working in a junior school.

And yet the improbable masked escape of the wanted man perhaps raises far more important issues than the woman's claim of religious discrimination. Mustaf Jama was not only able to elude police by dressing in a form of head-to-toe burqa or chador, but also leave the country through supposedly tight antiterrorist airport security, blithely waving his sister's passport.