Muslim inmate is allowed to wear hijab at county jail

Officials provide religious garb after complaint filed by lawyers

Nadia Irsan was wearing an orange jail uniform, an olive green long-sleeved shirt and a black head scarf with a small patch of maroon when she sat down across from her lawyer Thursday in a glass-partitioned conference room in the Harris County Jail.

The 31-year-old observant Muslim, who likely will remain behind bars at least another year before she goes to trial on a charge of stalking, smiled at her attorney.

“It was a lot of colors,” said lawyer Jackie Carpenter. “But that wasn’t an issue. She finally looked comfortable.”

A day after Carpenter and attorney Eric Davis went public with their concerns that Irsan’s religious rights were being violated because she was not allowed to wear the covering that are tenets of her faith, officials with the sheriff’s office saw to it that she had a hijab and a long-sleeved shirt.

‘I can breathe again!’

“It was like she said, ‘Oh my God, I can breathe again!’” Carpenter said of the immediate change in her client. “She was far more focused and energetic. She’s happy.”

Officials with the sheriff’s office confirmed that Irsan had been given the requisite religious garb and said they are working with the Public Defender’s Office and the Harris County Attorney’s Office to continue to make accommodations for her.

Irsan is behind bars in lieu of $500,000 bail that her lawyers say she will never be able to make. She is accused, along with other family members, of taking part in an extensive criminal plot that in 2012 ended with two fatal shootings that authorities called “honor killings.”

Irsan and other members of her family have been convicted of fraud in an unrelated case in federal court. After she was convicted last year, Irsan was moved to the Harris County Jail to face state charges for her role in the two shootings.

The situation seemed unfair to her attorneys because she was allowed the religious coverings while in federal custody, but they were taken away when she got to the county lockup.

Security concerns

Carpenter and another female attorney spent weeks meeting with Irsan instead of her primary attorney, Eric Davis, because it is against the woman’s faith to be seen without covering by men who are not family.

The lawyers said jailers told them there were security concerns about bringing in religious garb even though it had been issued in federal court. Inmates are not allowed to wear their own clothes, bring their own hygiene items or even bring their own prescription medication when they are booked into the jail, for a slew of security reasons.

As a stopgap, jailers gave her a bedsheet to use as a hijab and socks to cut holes in to use as sleeves. Those were later taken away, and her lawyers said she was being retaliated against for complaining about the makeshift coverings. It was a charge sheriff’s officials denied, saying it was more likely the coverings were taken as security precautions as she was repeatedly moved between her cell and the medical unit.

“No report of retaliation or refusal of access to accommodations has been reported to the Office of the Inspector General/Internal Affairs Division,” according to a written statement from the agency. “All inmates are subject to search, and at times and in certain secured environments, are required to remove articles of clothing. As was the case when inmate Irsan was transported to the jail’s medical clinic.”

Two-month fight

Since there have been relatively few observant Muslim women who have spent long stretches of time in the jail, issuing and allowing hijabs seems to have been untrodden ground. Carpenter and Davis, two of the lawyer at the Harris County Public Defenders Office, spent almost two months trying to get the accommodations before going public.

On Thursday, Carpenter said she hopes Irsan’s plight means that the accessories will be available for other Muslim woman incarcerated in the jail.

Irsan has been convicted in a federal fraud scheme, but she is awaiting trial along with her father, Ali Mahwood-Awad, and his wife and adult son. They are all accused of gunning down her sister’s husband and her sister’s best friend, Iranian activist Gelareh Bagherzadeh.

Prosecutors say the family conspired to commit the shootings after the sister disavowed the family to marry a Houston man.