Marine Le Pen was today facing up to three years in prison after being charged with tweeting ‘monstrous’ Islamic State images including one of the terrorist group beheading an American journalist.
The 49-year-old leader of France’s far-Right National Front has denied any wrongdoing, but now faces trial in the Paris suburb of Nanterre.
Beyond the three-years in prison, prosecutors can also demand a maximum fine equivalent to £67,000.
As well as three years in prison, the National Front leader also faces a fine equivalent to £67,000
Ms Le Pen has been charged along with Gilbert Collard, a 70-year-old lawyer and MP with close links to Ms Le Pen’s party.
A criminal investigation was first launched in December 2015 for the ‘diffusion of obscene images’, said a prosecuting source in Nanterre.
It followed a number of complaints, including one by the parents of American James Foley, who was murdered by Islamic State, which is also known as Daesh, in 2014.
John and Diane Foley accused Ms Le Pen of using the ‘shamefully uncensored’ photos for her own political ends.
In a joint statement they said: ‘We are deeply disturbed by the unsolicited use of Jim for Le Pen’s political gain and hope that the picture of our son, along with the two other graphic photographs, are taken down immediately.’
Ms Le Pen tweeted the decapitation photo under the caption ‘This is Daesh’ along with another of a man on fire in a cage, and a victim being crushed by a tank.
The charges come after a number of complaints, including from John and Diane Foley (pictured)
She addressed the tweets to BFM TV journalist Jean-Jacques Bourdin, whom she accused of likening her party to the jihadist group.
Manuel Valls, France’s Prime Minister at the time, described the photos as ‘monstrous’, adding that Ms Le Pen had shown ‘political and moral failing’ and her ‘non-respect for victims’.
It was Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve who went to the police in 2015, saying the tweets should be investigated ‘as they do every time these kind of photos are published’.
He said the photos are ‘Daesh propaganda and are a disgrace, an abomination and an absolute insult to all victims of Daesh’.
James Foley pictured in the Syrian city of Aleppo in 2012. He was murdered by ISIS in 2014
Ms Le Pen was reacting to comments by Bourdin, who said there were ‘links’ between the National Front National and ISIS.
At the time, Claude Hermant, a former National Front bodyguard, was in custody in France after being accused of supplying the guns to Amedy Coulibaly, an ISIS linked terrorist who murdered five people, including four Jews, in Paris in January 2011.
Faced with outrage against France, Ms Le Pen later deleted the tweets, but the row did not stop her standing to become President of France in 2017.
In elections held last Spring, she was runner up Emmanuel Macron, the current centrist head of state.
Ms Le Pen’s father, the FN founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, is a convicted racist, anti-Semite and Holocaust denier.