A Jewish teacher who fabricated a knife attack by Islamic State terrorists in France has been given a six month suspended prison sentence

Tzion Saadon, 57, told his lies in November 2015, a few days after 130 people were murdered during a single night of violence in Paris. Inviting journalists to his home in Marseille, he said that three men had assaulted him as they shouted Islamic slogans, and Death to Jews. Showing of his stomach wounds, Saadon even said that one of his attackers wore an Isis T-shirt, and displayed pictures of Mohamed Merah, the Al-Qaeda gunmen who murdered both Jews and Muslims in 2012. But there were no independent witnesses to Saadon’s ordeal, and forensic examinations later proved that he had caused the knife slashes himself. Saadon kept up his story throughout his trial in Marseille, but prosecutor Andre Ribes said: “The truth is he wasn’t assaulted in the way he says.” President Francois Hollande himself had been among those who commented on the Saadon case in 2015, saying that it was a “barbarous” example of rising anti-Semitism.