Tzion Saadon
Photo: AFP
French teacher to stand trial over charges of making up Islamic State attack
Tzion Saadon accused of inventing his claim in November that he was attacked by ISIS supporters was fabricated; he is the second Jewish French teacher to have allegedly lied about ISIS attack.
A teacher at a Jewish school in the southern French city of Marseille will stand trial in April after investigators concluded that he falsely reported being stabbed by Islamic State supporters, the prosecutors said on Thursday.
The 45-year-old man in Aubervilliers, northeast of Paris, initially said a man had burst into his classroom and cut him with a box cutter and scissors.
Tzion Saadon invited the press to his house in Marseille in southern France the day after the supposed attack in November, saying he had been beaten by three men claiming to represent the jihadist group.
But a police source confirmed on Wednesday that the man had been arrested for allegedly fabricating the story.
He is not the only French teacher to be accused of lying about an ISIS attack. In January, a nursery school teacher was sent for psychiatric tests after admitting he lied about an attack in his classroom.
Tzion Saadon displaying the injuries he claims to have sustained in ISIS attack (Photo: AFP)
But he later admitted inventing the story and cutting himself on the neck and side.
The cases came with France still on edge in the wake of the November attacks in Paris, claimed by ISIS, that killed 130 people.
Tzion Saadon displaying the injuries he claims to have sustained in ISIS attack (Photo: AFP)
There is no doubt over another attack in Marseille in January, when a teacher wearing a kippa, a Jewish skullcap, was set upon by a self-radicalized teenager -- the latest in a series of anti-Semitic incidents in the port city.
The city's top Jewish leader, Zvi Ammar, called on Jewish men and boys to stop wearing the kippa "until better days", saying: "Unfortunately for us, we are targeted. As soon as we are identified as Jewish we can be assaulted and even risk death."
