Unveiled, face of the woman who refused to remove her niqab in court
THIS is the face of the Muslim fanatic who made legal history as the first woman to go on trial wearing the niqab. Rebekah Dawson, 22 – whose refusal to remove the full-face covering has caused controversy – is pictured here for the first time, dressed in a casual T-shirt.
The image can finally be revealed after she dramatically admitted witness intimidation yesterday.
Her guilty plea followed a six-day trial during which a judge controversially allowed her to wear the niqab after ruling that the court should recognise ‘freedom of religious expression’.
Today it can be disclosed that the Muslim convert – who threatened a caretaker because he let tourists into a mosque with their heads uncovered – hails from a devoutly Christian family and started wearing the veil only as recently as 2012 after being radicalised by a ‘Muslim vigilante’.
Pictures taken six years ago show her as a carefree teenager enjoying listening to music and dancing with her relatives. But just a few years later, she shocked family members by turning up at the funeral of her grandmother Delcie Dawson wearing a burka.
Her great uncle, Gilbert Bell, said her Jamaican-born grandmother worked as a nurse at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford and raised her family as strict Christians.
‘My sister Delcie would turn in her grave if she knew how Rebekah was carrying on,’ he added. ‘Delcie was very religious, a committed church-goer.’
Mr Bell’s wife Dorothy said: ‘I’m horrified and angry that a woman wants to put on an Islamic veil. That is like going
‘Makes a mockery of justice system’
backwards in women’s rights. I really can’t understand it at all.’
Brought up in a broken and violent household, Dawson had a chaotic childhood that may give an insight into her rejection of Western values.
Born in South London in 1991, the jobless Muslim fanatic is the fifth of six children. Her father, Christopher, 54, was released from prison last year after serving a five-year sentence for trying to smuggle £100,000 worth of cannabis into the UK from Ethiopia.
This week, Blackfriars Crown Court heard how Dawson had recruited her brother Matthias to help her frighten a caretaker at Finsbury Park Mosque in North London because he had let three Portuguese charity workers into the building on June 4 last year.
She confronted caretaker Daudi Yusuf, saying: ‘ Why are you inviting naked women in the mosque?’
A fight broke out after her husband Royal Barnes, 23, intervened. Terrified, Mr Yusuf reported him to the police.
Two weeks later, Dawson returned to the mosque – where hate preacher Abu Hamza famously disseminated his poisonous beliefs – accompanied by her brother to challenge Mr Yusuf.
She asked him: ‘Why did you tell the police my husband is threatening to kill you?’
This led to her trial for witness intimidation, during which she was allowed to wear her veil – to the fury of campaigners for open justice.
Judge Peter Murphy insisted she remove her niqab to give her evidence.
But Dawson’s lawyer attempted to challenge his decision, arguing that forcing her to remove the veil to give evidence violated her right to a fair trial.
When Judge Murphy rejected this challenge and invited her to remove the veil in front of the jury of six women and men, Dawson refused. She later declined to give evidence, claiming it was against her religious beliefs to show her face to men.
The jury were discharged at the end of the trial after failing to reach a verdict, despite deliberating for more than 12 hours.
Facing the prospect of a retrial, Dawson admitted her guilt, but only after making a deal with prosecutors that the case against her 32-year-old brother Matthias – who was facing the same charge – would be dropped.
Last night Dr David Green, director of the think-tank Civitas, said it was wrong that Dawson had been allowed to wear the veil in court.
‘This really makes a mockery of the justice system,’ he said.
‘I do not think she should have been allowed to wear the veil at all during the trial.
‘It weakens the extent to which the court is doing justice because it’s not just a matter of looking at someone’s face when they give evidence.
‘That’s an important part of the jury’s judgment and this may be why the jury was unable to reach a verdict in this case.’ Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society, wrote to the Ministry of Justice last year about the case.
He said: ‘Justice can only be done where jurors can observe the demeanour of defendants and witnesses, not just when giving evidence but throughout the trial.
‘The justice authorities must act quickly to make sure that this trial is not used as a precedent to permit full face veils.
‘We further regret the significant wasted court time on this issue.’