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France: Front National - court roundup

01 July 1997

Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of France's neo-nazi Front National (FN), will stand trial in November accused of assaulting a Socialist parliamentary candidate during the National Assembly election campaign last May. He will be tried in a criminal court, probably in Versailles, on charges of violence at a public gathering and public insult. The incident took place in a Paris suburb where Le Pen was campaigning on behalf of his daughter against the Socialist candidate Ms Annette Peulvast. Videotapes of the incident clearly show the portly French fascist tussling with Ms Peulvast and throwing her to the floor. Le Pen was fined 5,000 francs last July by a Paris court after making a racist slur against an anti-racist campaigner. Neither the Front National's violence nor Le Pen's dubious history have prevented the Gaullist right from ardently courting him - recently Le Pen is reported to have dined with former president Valery Giscard d'Estaing, former RPR Secretary General Jean Francoise Mancel and Gaullist MP, Robert Pendraud.

Another senior FN member and mayor of Vitrolles in southern France, Catherine Megret, was given a three-month suspended prison sentence in September for promoting racial hatred after giving an interview with the German daily Berliner Zeitung. Megret is the wife of Bruno Megret, Le Pen's deputy, and won the seat in mayoral elections last February after her husband was disqualified from standing for corruption. Megret claimed that she could not remember making the remarks and even suggested that the tape could have been tampered with. The court rejected the prosecutor's plea that she be disqualified from office.

International Herald Tribune 1 & 9.7.97.