France: In court with Le Pen
01 November 1998
France's most notorious "politician" has been keeping the French courts busy over the past few weeks. Following his conviction for assaulting a female socialist candidate during an election campaign last year, he was fined the equivalent of £529 and banned from French politics for a year, but is appealing against this. The ban is suspended whilst the appeal is pending, making it possible that Le Pen will be able to head the FN list in next years European elections. He has moreover affirmed that in the event that he is unable to participate, his wife will head the list in his place. When a France-Soir journalist pointed out to Le Pen that by her own admission, his wife knows nothing about politics, his view was that this did not matter; she would be a "standard-bearer", not a spokesperson. He is also insisting, in spite of Megret's obvious ambitions, that he will head the list for the French presidential elections in 2002.
On November 25, a Nanterre court fined both Le Pen and his deputy, Megret, ordering each man to pay the equivalent of £1,050 to the French Union of Jewish Students, (UEJF). Le Pen had affirmed at an FN summer school in 1996 that he believed in the inequality of races. In February 1997, Megret affirmed his belief in a hierarchy of races. The Nanterre tribunal ruled that the men, in the light of their status as public figures with public duties, had committed an abuse of freedom of expression. With regard to Catherine Megret's comments to the Berliner Zeitung, in which she evoked the notion of genetic differences between races, the court could not find grounds upon which to fine her, but noted that the notion of human races was highly contestable.
Le Pen was also happy to reaffirm for France-Soir his notorious view on the gas chambers in the nazi concentration camps; they remain, in his opinion, a "detail" of history. When asked in the same interview whether the UK extradition case against former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet should be pursued, Le Pen replied that he hadn't seen anyone going after the former leaders of the former Soviet Union: the key reason for this appears to be beyond his comprehension.
France-Soir 5.11.98; Independent 21.11.98; Le Monde 30.10.98, 10 & 27.11.98; International Herald Tribune 21 & 22.11.98.