ROME, Sept 20: An Italian member of the European Parliament jumped into a national controversy over head coverings for Muslim women in Italy on Monday, saying burqas should be banned because they are a "symbol of death".

Mario Borghezio of the populist Northern League party lashed out at the head covering after a policeman in northern Italy fined a woman who wore the burqa, outside her home on Saturday.

The woman's mother called the treatment of her daughter, a convert to Islam, harassment, and said the local authorities were acting "worse than what the Fascists did 60 years ago."

Borghezio praised the policeman and the town mayor who backed him for "doing their duty," noting that Italian law prohibits people from moving about with their faces covered.

Burqas, he said, were "a symbol of the most obscurantist type of Islamic fundamentalism in regards to women" and had also become a "symbol of death" because some of the women hostage-takers at the Russian school wore burqa-style coverings.

The fining of Sabrina Varroni, a 34-year-old mother of four married to a Muslim, revived a national controversy over Muslim head coverings in predominantly Roman Catholic Italy.

Italians are divided over whether to allow headscarves to be worn in public but there are no specific laws banning them such as in France, where they, and other religious symbols, are prohibited in state schools.

Leftist senator Gianfranco Pagliarulo blasted the fining, calling it "an ignoble persecution that widens the distance between diverse cultures." Pagliarulo, a Communist Party member, said the mayor of the town was shrinking from his duty of defending the rights of all his citizens and accused him of inciting religious intolerance.

Varroni's 70-year-old mother, Santina, said the behaviour of the local officials reminded her of life during the Fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini before World War Two.

"I lived through Fascism. I know what it is. This (town) administration is run by Fascists," she told Reuters by phone. "All that's left to do is to take my daughter away and put her before a firing squad for being different," she said.

Santina Varroni said her daughter converted to Islam 11 years ago and began wearing a headscarf. She started covering her face completely four years ago after performing Haj. -Reuters