French teacher who lied about anti-Semitic attack by Isis supporters gets suspended sentence

A French teacher who lied about being the victim of an anti-Semitic attack by Islamic State (Isis) supporters has received a six-month suspended sentence.

Tzion Saadon, 57, claimed that days after the 13 November Paris attacks by Isis (Daesh) militants that left 130 dead, he was set upon by three men in Marseille, who shouted Islamist slogans and attacked him with a knife.

Police officers and medics say that the man lied about being attacked, with one official claiming he made up the story following marital problems. "The truth is he wasn't assaulted in the way he says," prosecutor Andre Ribes told AFP.

The history and geography teacher at a Jewish school gained widespread media attention after claiming to have been attacked. Saadon appeared alongside community leaders, inviting journalists into his home to display superficial scars on his forearm and abdomen.

Prosecutors believe he created the scars himself despite Saadon maintaining, throughout the trial, that he had been attacked.

The claim came only months after the January attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris by IS supporter Amedy Coulibaly. President Francois Hollande described the 'attack' as "terrible", amid concerns about the increase of anti-Semitic violence in France.

A Jewish teacher was wounded in a machete attack, in January, by a 15-year-old IS supporter, radicalised after watching online propaganda – in a genuine act of anti-Semitic violence in Marseille.