Marine Le Pen ordered to take psych evaluation over ISIL tweets
Far-right French politician shared images of atrocities carried out by ISIL with the caption ‘Daesh is this’.
Published On 20 Sep 2018
French far-right politician Marine Le Pen was ordered by a court to undergo psychiatric evaluation for tweeting atrocity photos from the armed group ISIL.
According to court documents posted on Twitter by the leader of the National Front party, the psychological tests are to be carried out “as soon as possible” to establish whether she “is capable of understanding remarks and answering questions”.
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A lawyer, Le Pen, 50, called the court order dated September 11 “crazy” on Thursday.
Le Pen, who lost the presidential election to Emmanuel Macron in last year’s vote, shared the tweets in December 2015, several weeks after ISIL members killed 130 people in attacks in Paris.
“I thought I had experienced everything, but no! For having denounced the horrors of Daesh, the court has ordered me to undergo a psychiatric evaluation,” Le Pen wrote on Twitter.
“This country is really starting to scare me.”
C'est proprement HALLUCINANT. Ce régime commence VRAIMENT à faire peur. MLP pic.twitter.com/WCX6WBCgi4
— Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel) September 20, 2018
The images of violent acts carried out by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) included photos of the lifeless body of American James Foley.
Foley, a journalist, was beheaded by the armed group after he was captured in Syria.
Le Pen said she tweeted the images in response to a French journalist who drew a comparison between ISIL and her far-right National Front party.
Another photo showed a man in an orange jumpsuit being run over by a tank, and a third showed a Jordanian military pilot being burned alive in a cage.
Le Pen later deleted the tweet with Foley’s body after his family requested the removal.
After she sent the images, she was charged with circulating messages that “incite terrorism or pornography or seriously harm human dignity”, and was stripped of her parliamentary immunity.
If Le Pen is convicted in court, she faces up to three years in prison and a fine of about $87,000.
The far-right politician has denounced the case, which falls under a law punishing violent or sexual images that can be viewed by a minor, saying it is a violation of her freedom of expression.
Source: Al Jazeera