A French nursery school teacher who claimed on Monday he was stabbed in his classroom by an ISIS supporter has admitted to prosecutors that he invented the story.
The 45-year-old teacher at a school in Aubervilliers, northeast of Paris, was hospitalised with light stab wounds in his side and throat.
He had earlier claimed that a man in overalls and a balaclava had arrived while he was preparing his class today, grabbed a box cutter and scissors that were in the room, and attacked him.
The teacher further claimed that the man shouted: “This is Daesh (another name for ISIS). This is a warning.” Prosecutors said they were still questioning the teacher, whose injuries were not considered life-threatening, over why he lied.
With France on edge a month on from attacks in Paris, and with the ISIS calling for attacks on French schools, the investigation had been immediately taken over by anti- terrorism prosecutors.
The case even prompted a visit by Education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, who vowed to boost security at France’s schools.
The ISIS’s French-language magazine Dar-al-Islam called in its November edition for its followers to kill teachers in the French education system, describing them as “enemies Aof Allah”.
“This education, in the case of France in particular, is a means of propaganda used to impose the corrupt way of thought established by the Judeo-masonry,” it said.