Former French presidential candidate and leader of the populist Front National Marine Le Pen has been indicted on charges of “dissemination of violent images” after she highlighted Islamic State abuses on Twitter in 2015.
Ms. Le Pen was indicted Thursday by a judge in Nanterre and could potentially face a penalty of up to three years in prison or a fine of up to 75,000 euros, L’Express reports.
The Front National (FN) leader is not the only member of her party facing the same charges. FN MP Gilbert Collard is also facing possible indictment for the same charges as he also posted images of Islamic State brutality around the same time as Ms. Le Pen. Collard had his parliamentary immunity removed in September.
According to AFP one of the pictures tweeted out by Le Pen contained the body of American journalist James Foley who was brutally murdered by the British Islamic radical known as “Jihadi John”. Other pictures showed Islamic State militants burning prisoners alive and running them over with tanks.
Fighting back against the allegations, Ms. Le Pen said,:”I am being charged for having condemned the horrors of Daesh.”
“In other countries, this would have earned me a medal,” she added.
The indictment also comes almost exactly a year after the European Parliament lifted the parliamentary immunity from Ms. Le Pen on request of the French judiciary.
Over the course of the last year, Le Pen has faced other legal challenges, including being accused of being a part of a “fake jobs” scandal that led to the headquarters of the FN being raided last February while Le Pen was on a visit to Lebanon.
During the Lebanon trip, Le Pen made worldwide headlines when she refused to wear an Islamic headscarf on a visit to the Grand Mufti. As a result of her defiance, the meeting was cancelled.
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