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France: French nazi-apologist sentenced

01 January 2008

The far-right leader of the Front National (FN), Jean Marie Le Pen (79), has been given a three month suspended sentence for condoning war crimes after describing the nazi occupation of France in the Second World War as "not particularly inhumane". Le Pen's comments were made in an interview with the far-right magazine, Rivarol, in January 2005, when he said: "In France at least the German occupation was not particularly inhumane, even if there were a number of excesses...If the Germans had carried out mass executions across the country as the received wisdom would have it, then there wouldn't have been any need for concentration camps for political deportees." The nazi-apologist also partially exonerated the nazis over the Villnueve d'Ascq massacre of 86 people in 1944, claiming that it was not policy but the result of the actions of a junior officer.

The Vichy government is estimated to have deported over 70,000 French Jews to death camps during the occupation between 1940 and 1944. The court ruled that Le Pen had denied a crime against humanity and was complicit in condoning war crimes. Le Pen, who has previous convictions for racism and anti-Semitism, was last found guilty of denying nazi war crimes in 1987 when he described the nazi death camps as a mere "detail of history".

In a separate incident, the French Interior Minister, Michell Alliot-Marie, suspended three French police officers who are alleged to have made nazi salutes and shouted racist insults in a drunken incident in the northern town of Amiens at the beginning of February. The three policemen, who were in plain clothes, were accompanied by two other men and shouted "Sieg Heil" leading the bar's owner to report their behaviour to the authorities. The interior minister described their behaviour as "intolerable" and added that it totally contradicts police ethics.

BBC News 8.2.08