A French court handed a four-month suspended jail sentence today to a woman who pretended she was the victim of an anti-Semitic attack in which swastikas were daubed on her stomach.
Marie-Leonie Leblanc (23) said six knife-wielding youths of Arab and African origin attacked her on a Paris train on July 9th because they thought she was Jewish, chopping off some of her hair and toppling a stroller carrying her 13-month-old baby.
Marie-Leonie Leblanc
Leblanc, who had risked up to six months in jail and a €7,500 fine for reporting an imaginary crime, later admitted she had made up the whole story, which made headlines and triggered condemnations from government politicians.
"I wanted people to look after me," a pale Leblanc, dressed in jeans and a white sweatshirt, told a magistrate's court in the northwest Paris suburb of Cergy-Pontoise. "I wanted my parents and (my partner) Christophe to look after me."
The sentence requires Leblanc to undergo medical treatment and includes a two-year probationary period.
President Jacques Chirac and Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin quickly condemned the alleged attack, which outraged the nation. Opposition politicians later accused them of being too hasty and failing to check their facts.
Chirac later said he did not regret his words because racist attacks were on the rise in France. He had given a speech days earlier demanding a determined fight against racism and all other forms of intolerance in France.
Ten days after Leblanc's story, Israeli Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon angered France by calling on French Jews to emigrate to Israel to escape what he called the "wildest anti-Semitism".
Asked by a civil party's lawyer why she had blamed the invented attack on youths of Arab or African origin, Leblanc said: "When I watch TV, they're always the ones who get blamed."
A public prosecutor explained how she invented the attack, cut off part of her hair and drew swastikas on her body. Leblanc has already appeared on television, her back to the camera, and apologised for inventing the story.
Police said she had previously reported imaginary attacks on herself and a psychiatrist who examined her earlier this month said she had a very strong need to be acknowledged "no matter what the price".