Finland’s Supreme Court has ruled that police had lawful grounds to use force when two asylum seekers refused to remove their religious headscarves for registration photographs, bringing to an end a criminal case that began at a police station in Hämeenlinna in 2017.
The decision, issued on 22 September 2026, leaves in place earlier rulings that rejected charges against the police officers and guards involved. The Supreme Court’s five-member panel reached its decision by a 4-1 majority.
The case concerned two women who were registering asylum applications when they were told that their photographs had to be taken without the hijabs they wore for religious reasons. The scarves covered their hair and heads but left their faces visible. Police told them that only female personnel would be present during the photography, but the women refused and asked to be photographed at another police station, where they said they had previously been allowed to keep their scarves on.
After the refusal, officers sought instructions from a senior police officer. He ordered that the photographs be taken without the scarves and said that resistance could be overcome with the least force necessary.
The situation then escalated. The women were separated while the photographs were taken. One woman resisted an order to leave the registration room and was held by her wrists as officers moved her into a corridor. She attempted to return to the room and continued to struggle.
Inside the registration room, officers restrained the second woman after she moved towards the door. She was held in place, seated and had her scarf removed before the photograph was taken. Officers then held her by the shoulder and upper arm during the photography. The other woman was later brought back into the room and held by the arms while her photograph was taken. The Supreme Court record says the use of force caused pain, tenderness and marks on the women’s skin.
Prosecutors subsequently brought charges including breach of official duty and assault. The senior officer was also accused of inciting assault because of his instruction that resistance could be overcome using the least necessary force.
Kanta-Häme District Court dismissed the charges in September 2022. Turku Court of Appeal reached the same conclusion in March 2024, finding, among other things, that the legal position surrounding the requirement to photograph asylum seekers without religious head coverings was unclear and that the force used in the circumstances was defensible.
The Supreme Court was asked to consider whether the officers had a lawful basis for the conduct established by the lower courts and whether their actions amounted to criminal offences.
The court found that photographing an asylum seeker during the registration of an application is part of a police officer’s official duties. Finnish law allows police or border authorities to collect fingerprints, photographs and other identifying information from people applying for asylum or certain forms of protection. The purpose includes verifying identity during the later stages of the immigration process.
Finnish law does not specifically state how such photographs must be taken. However, police guidance in force at the time instructed that people wearing head coverings for religious or cultural reasons should also be photographed without them, while staff were expected to respect the person’s values and act appropriately during registration.
The Supreme Court concluded that the order to photograph the women without their hijabs was based on law and served a legitimate public purpose: ensuring that their identities could be reliably established throughout the asylum process. The court also referred to European Court of Human Rights case law concerning religious head coverings in photographs used for official documents.
That finding did not mean, however, that police have an unrestricted right to use force whenever someone refuses an instruction. The court stressed that Finnish police law requires officers to respect fundamental and human rights and to choose, among justifiable alternatives, the course that best protects those rights. Police measures must also be proportionate, and officers must not interfere with a person’s rights more than is necessary to perform their duties.
The law also requires police to rely first on advice, requests and orders before resorting to force. Officers may abandon a measure where carrying it out could produce an unreasonable result in relation to the objective being pursued.
In this case, the Supreme Court found that those principles did not make the force unlawful. The court considered the women’s resistance, including attempts to return to the registration room and physical struggling, and concluded that the force used to restrain them and carry out the photography was necessary and defensible in the circumstances established by the lower court.
The court also considered the senior officer’s instruction. Because he was not at the scene when the photographs were being taken, his direction was treated as a general instruction to use only the least force necessary. The officers at the scene remained responsible for determining what level of force was appropriate in the circumstances. The Supreme Court therefore found that the senior officer had not breached his official duties or incited assault.
At the same time, the Supreme Court acknowledged that police could have chosen to stop the photography. Because an asylum application is initiated by the applicant, the court said abandoning the procedure after the women’s resistance became intense could have been justified. But the law left that decision to the police’s case-by-case discretion, and the officers could not be held criminally responsible for continuing with the procedure.
Justice Tuija Turpeinen dissented from the majority’s reasoning on the use of force during the photography, although she agreed that the charges should ultimately be dismissed. Her position was that the women had offered an alternative: moving their scarves towards the back of their heads so that their faces and ears would remain visible. In her view, photographs taken in that way would still have allowed the women to be identified during the registration process.
Turpeinen therefore considered that using force specifically to remove the scarves for the photographs was not necessary or defensible. She also pointed to the fact that the women had previously been photographed during asylum registration while wearing their head coverings. However, she considered the alleged breach of official duty minor in light of the national guidance and the direct instruction the officers had received from their superior, and agreed with the dismissal of the charges.
The ruling does not remove the requirement for police to assess proportionality in individual situations. Instead, it establishes that taking an asylum registration photograph without a religious head covering can constitute a lawful police duty and that, where the statutory conditions for force are met, police may use necessary and defensible force to overcome resistance. The Supreme Court also made clear that officers must still consider less intrusive options and retain the ability to abandon the measure where continuing would lead to an unreasonable outcome.
The case therefore closes with the criminal charges against the officers and guards dismissed, but the divided decision also records a clear disagreement within the Supreme Court over how far the use of force should extend when the immediate purpose is obtaining a registration photograph. The majority upheld the legality of the force used in the circumstances of this case, while the dissent questioned whether that force was necessary once an alternative method of taking an identifiable photograph had been offered.
