- France heaved a sigh of relief yesterday after a young
woman admitted she had fabricated a tale about a gang of North African
Muslims attacking her and her baby on a train after mistaking her for a
Jew.
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- The stunning development took place yesterday afternoon
during an intensive interrogation of the woman by police detectives. For
three days, the French had swung on a pendulum of panic between whom to
believe - the young woman with her horrifying tale of violence, anti-Semitism
and civic indifference by other passengers on the train, or the police,
who said they could not find any evidence to back up the woman's claim
and noted that on at least six different occasions she claimed to have
been the victim of violent attacks.
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- The woman, whom the press named only as Marie Leonie,
stuck to her version of events. Six men had attacked her because they thought
she was Jewish. The police, who interrogated her night and day, stuck to
their version that there was no evidence backing up her claim.
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- And the French public was confused, embarrassed and distressed,
particularly government leaders who issued increasingly vehement condemnations
of the barbaric attack as the story reverberated throughout the press.
The press urged the national leadership to create a revolution in policing
and security methods, otherwise "France itself will slip through our
fingers," as one commentator wrote.
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- Jewish organizations condemned the incident, calling
it the worst of any of the many anti-Semitic attacks that have taken place
in the country in recent years.
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- But gradually, the picture became blurred, and the chain
of events, as told by the victim, was revealed to be full of holes and
contradictions.
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- At first, the woman left a credible impression on all
those who checked her story, even though the police were skeptical. But
gradually, the story began to turn. First, a passenger on the same train
came forward to say he remembered her getting on the train, and her clothes
were already torn. It also didn't help that the closed circuit TV cameras
on board the train did not capture any assault scene.
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- Because of the story's enormity, police shifted their
focus to the 23-year-old single mother of a baby named Leah, who told them
that the attack took place Friday morning. Yesterday, after police proved
that she was home Friday morning, it became a matter of wearing her down
until she confessed. Eventually she confessed, admitting a boyfriend had
helped her. Now she faces a trial and jail.
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- Five years ago, she completed a teachers' training course
at the Rene Cassin school in Paris, planning to become a teacher. In recent
years she has lived in the sprawling neighborhood of North African immigrants
north of Paris where, to ease the overcrowding of the flood of "new
immigrants" from North Africa, the state built densely populated high
rises that suffocated the new tenants. In recent years, most of the attacks
ascribed to anti-Semitism have taken place in this district, Seine-Saint-Denis.
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- One person who came forward was a woman who claimed to
be a friend of Marie Leonie. But she was of no help to her friend. Speaking
to Le Figaro, the "friend," who insisted on her anonymity, said
"Marie tends to attribute to herself incidents that happen to others...
She's jealous of people who are in the headlines, and when I saw the scale
of this story, I realized she had gone too far." She said that a few
days before the alleged attack, Marie Leonie had told her she was horrified
by a report of how a young Jew had been assaulted by some North Africans
just because he was a Jew. "I'm sure she stole the plot and dressed
herself up in it," the woman told the newspaper.
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- Throughout all that, politicians continued to speak out
as if there had been another, particularly ugly anti-Semitic attack. French
Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said yesterday that anti-Semitism is
a disgrace to France. "There is something ill in our society,"
he said, adding, "the apathy of citizens to violence," referring
to the way nobody came to the defense of Marie Leonie in the assault.
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- But yesterday afternoon Marie Leonie confessed to inventing
the entire story. And suddenly, all of France, which had reared up in anguish
over the event, fell silent. Jewish organization leaders, politicians,
all of them.
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- Jewish leaders also worried that the entire affair could
now backlash against the Jews, or at least against complaints over anti-Semitism.
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