A teacher who had claimed he was assaulted in a nursery school north of Paris by a man acting for Islamic State was making the story up, the Paris prosecutor’s office has said.
The teacher had claimed a hooded man had attacked him with a knife-like weapon as he prepared for classes.
“He is being interviewed with a view to establishing the reasons for this invented story,” said an official.
Earlier on Monday, other French officials told how the teacher had reported that a hooded assailant claiming a link to the militant Islamist group had attacked him as he prepared for classes.
The male teacher was taken to hospital after the alleged attack.
An earlier report indicated that the assailant told his victim, “this is Daesh, it’s a warning”.
In a recent French-language publication, Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for the deadly Paris attacks of November 13th, denounced France’s state school system and urged readers to kill its teachers because they promoted what it called the evils of secular learning, music and drawing.
Conclusions
France’s education minister and a local government prefect visited the premises of the school in Aubervilliers, in the Saint-Denis region just north of the capital. Classes at the school were cancelled.
Prefect Philippe Galli told reporters it was too early to draw conclusions about the character of the attack, noting that the assailant, wearing a balaclava, had apparently found a cutter and a pair of scissors at the school premises.
The incident came a month after gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people in Paris in an attack claimed by Islamic State, the militant Islamist group which controls swathes of Syria and Iraq and has vowed to attack France, a member of the coalition of countries conducting air strikes against it.
It also came days after a knifing in London’s underground urban rail network which police are treating as a terrorist attack.
Reuters