- PARIS -- A woman who claimed
to have been the victim of an anti-semitic attack that shocked France admitted
yesterday that she had made up the incident. Classified Motoring
-
- The 23-year-old confessed after being arrested amid growing
suspicion about her account. She is said to have a record of reporting
alleged crimes for which no culprit could be traced.
-
- President Jacques Chirac will be embarrassed by the development
after moving so swiftly to condemn Friday's alleged assault before any
corroborating evidence was found.
-
- The woman, identified only as Marie-Leonie L claimed
that a gang of six youths of North African Arab appearance attacked her
on a Paris suburban train, slashing her clothes and drawing swastikas on
her stomach, after mistaking her for a Jew.
-
- Almost as disturbing as the detail of the assault was
her claim that 20 other passengers had done nothing to help her. Despite
government pleas for witnesses, no one came forward. Yesterday, the woman
changed her story to say she had been assaulted outside the train before
finally admitting that she invented the entire incident.
-
- Police said she told them that she had drawn the swastikas
on her own stomach with the help of her boyfriend.
-
- State prosecutors said she had been placed in preventive
detention for "falsely reporting a crime". Her boyfriend was
also detained. The woman had originally claimed that her "assailants"
stole her bag and toppled a pram carrying her 13-month-old child before
fleeing.
-
- But investigators said closed-circuit television cameras
at the station north of Paris where the woman said the attackers boarded
the train did not reveal the presence of six youths.
-
- Last week, Mr Chirac pledged to crack down hard on perpetrators
of anti-semitic, racist and homophobic acts. He has refused to grant presidential
pardons to perpetrators of race-hate crimes.
-
- France's Socialist former finance minister, Dominique
Strauss-Kahn, said that even if the incident proved to be untrue, there
had undoubtedly been dozens of case this year in a worrying rise in anti-semitism.
-
- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;sessionid=YGT3UNTXJ
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