PARIS (AFP) - The Jewish owner of a small French publisher was fined 5,000 euros (S$8,432) on Thursday for advertising a job vacancy with a warning that candidates of north African origin need not apply.

The advert posted at a job centre in the eastern suburbs of Paris stipulated that Jean-Luc Benady would not employ north Africans and led to a prosecution for discrimination on the grounds of race and religion.

After being found guilty and fined at a court in the small town of Bobigny, an unrepentant Benady described the way he had framed the advert as a "precautionary measure".

As a Jew, he argued, he was justified in regarding every member of France's large north African population as a potential threat because each of them "could have a father or a brother who doesn't like Jews".

"If I go out into the streets in this area, I might not come back alive," said the father of four, adding that he adopted the precautionary principle when it came to north Africans in the way that some consumers avoid genetically modified food.