Marine Le Pen on trial for disseminating images of Islamic State atrocities

Drawing of Marine Le Pen during her appearance, this Wednesday, before the Court of Nanterre BENOIT PEYRUCQ / AFP

The leader of the French extreme right, Marine Le Pen, tried on Wednesday to turn the trial against her for posting images of atrocities committed by the Islamic State on Twitter more than five years ago.

Le Pen, president of the National Regrouping (RN), is accused of "spreading messages that can violate human dignity and be seen by minors."

The Prosecutor's Office, in the trial, has requested a fine of 5,000 euros for Le Pen and for the other defendant, the RN Gilbert Collard MEP.

The court will announce the ruling on May 4.

The accused has defended herself by resorting to freedom of expression and has alleged that she disseminated these images in response to a journalist who had allegedly compared her party to the jihadists.

"It is a political process", has denounced Le Pen before entering the courtroom of the Nanterre Correctional Court, on the outskirts of Paris.

All polls predict that Le Pen will face President Emmanuel Macron in the second round of the 2022 presidential elections.

The events occurred at the end of 2015, a year in which Islamist terrorism killed 150 people in France.

The same year, the National Front, which would later be renamed the RN, was the most voted party in the first round of the regional elections.

On December 16, a well-known radio journalist, Jean-Jacques Bourdin, spoke on his program about the existence of “a community of spirit” between the Islamic State and the National Front.

Both pushed French society towards "identity withdrawal", according to Bourdin.

Le Pen reacted on Twitter to what he considered an unacceptable analogy between a terrorist group and a legal party in a European democracy.

To prove it, he posted a message with three propaganda photos of the Islamic State.

In one of them, the decapitated body of American journalist James Foley was seen.

The images were accompanied by a short text.

"This is Daesh!" He said, using the common denomination in France to designate the Islamic State.

The then French Minister of the Interior, Bernard Cazeneuve, reported the message to the police.

The Prosecutor's Office opened an investigation against Le Pen and Collard, who had also released a propaganda image of the Islamic State on the same occasion.

Le Pen and Collard lost their parliamentary immunity.

This Wednesday, in court, Le Pen has argued that disseminating the images had an "educational purpose" to show what the Islamic State really is.

He has accused the Prosecutor's Office of twisting the law to attack her.

And he has argued that what offends human dignity is not the dissemination of the photos, but the crimes they reflect.

"And the parallelism with Daesh," he added, "undermines the dignity of my movement."