NANTERRE, France — French far-right leader Marine Le Pen is charged on Thursday for posting on Twitter gruesome images of purported atrocities by Islamic State jihadists, prosecutors say.
The move by a judge in Nanterre, just outside Paris, comes after the National Assembly voted in November to strip the National Front chief of her parliamentary immunity over the three photos of IS violence posted in 2015.
Marine Le Pen, head of France’s far-right National Front party, touches the horn of Haute, a 6-year-old Aubrac breeding cow and the mascot for the 2018 Paris International Agriculture Fair at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris on February 28, 2018. (AFP Photo/Gerard Julien)
Le Pen, who lost to Emmanuel Macron in last year’s presidential vote, is facing charges of circulating “violent messages that incite terrorism or pornography or seriously harm human dignity” and that can be viewed by a minor.
The crime is punishable by up to three years in prison and a fine of 75,000 euros ($91,000).
The pictures were posted just a few weeks after the Paris terror attacks in November 2015 in which 130 people were killed.
“I am being charged for having condemned the horrors of Daesh,” Le Pen tells AFP, using an alternate name for IS. “In other countries this would have earned me a medal.”
— AFP
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