The 93-year-old founder of France’s National Front party, Jean-Marie le Pen, went on trial yesterday over allegations of once again inciting racial hatred, this time with comments about a Jewish pop singer.
Le Pen already has a string of hate speech convictions that eventually became too much for his daughter Marine le Pen, who expelled him from the National Front’s leadership in 2015.
The latest trial stems from a 2014 video on the party’s Web site in which Jean-Marie le Pen railed against artists who denounced his stances, including Madonna and the French tennis star-turned-singer Yannick Noah.
Photo: AFP
Asked about French singer and actor Patrick Bruel, Jean-Marie le Pen referred to Bruel’s Jewish origins with a pun evoking the Holocaust.
“I’m not surprised. Listen, next time we’ll do a whole oven batch,” he says.
The taunt sparked indignation, including from leaders of his own party, with Marine le Pen criticising him.
Jean-Marie le Pen said that the comments carried no anti-Semitic connotations, “except for my political enemies or imbeciles.”
He does not intend to appear in person at the trial in Paris, where he is charged with inciting anti-Semitic hatred, associates said.
“This case is based only on part of a phrase taken out of context,” said his lawyer Frederic Joachim, who is to seek to have the charge dismissed.
The trial was delayed for years while Jean-Marie le Pen claimed immunity from prosecution as a member of the European Parliament, a seat he won in 1984 and held until 2019.
However, fellow lawmakers stripped his legal protections over the case in 2016.
Jean-Marie le Pen remains a regular media presence, while his success in the 2002 presidential election — getting to the run-off stage before being defeated by then-French president Jacques Chirac — sent the Socialists into the political wilderness.
However, a new conviction could complicate the bid by Marine le Pen to take on French President Emmanuel Macron in elections next year.
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