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TRUTH IS NO DEFENSE
French right-wing
leader
 accused over WWII
remarks
France's
Le Pen to stand trial for Nazi remarks
<>PARIS — French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen will face
trial
for saying the Nazi
occupation of France during World War Two
had not been "particularly inhumane", a
judicial source said recently.
The conservative government, anti-racism
organisations and
Jewish groups sharply
condemned Le Pen's comments last year,
when they were
published in an interview with right-wing weekly
magazine Rivarol.
"In France, at least, the German occupation
was not particularly
inhumane, although there were some blunders,
inevitable in a
country of 550,000 sq km," Le Pen had said.
French anti-racism laws have made denying the
Holocaust a crime,
punishable by fines or prison.
Le Pen would be tried for "complicity in
contesting crimes
against FN Leader - Jean
Marie Le Pen
humanity and complicity in justifying war
crimes", the judicial source
said, without giving a date for the trial.
Le Pen, who in 1987 dismissed the Holocaust
as a "detail" of history,
alarmed Europe in 2002 by reaching the second
round of France's
presidential election on an anti-immigrant
and anti-Europe platform.
Le Pen is seeking to run again in the 2007
presidential poll. If the
court convicted him and he lost his
eligibility, Le Pen would still be
able appeal the
verdict — postponing a final ruling until after the
poll and allowing him to run.
Paris prosecutors and a group representing
the children of Jews
deported from France during World War Two had
called for judicial
investigations into Le Pen's comments last
year.
BPP Comment: Holohaux hysteria reaches new levels! |