Far-right firebrand and co-founder of France’s anti-immigration National Front movement Jean-Marie Le Pen is to be buried Saturday at a strictly family-only funeral after his death earlier this week aged 96.
The co-founder of the main French postwar far-right movement Jean-Marie Le Pen will be laid to rest Saturday at a strictly family-only funeral after his death aged 96 exposed polarising attitudes towards a figure who for decades shook and shocked the country.
The funeral in his hometown of La Trinite-sur-Mer in the Morbihan region of Brittany in western France will take place “in the strictest privacy with family”, his relatives said.
He will be buried in the vault where his parents rest. A ceremony will take place on January 16 at the Notre Dame du Val-de-Grace church in Paris that will be open to the public.
ADVERTISEMENT
Le Pen’s staunchly anti-immigration National Front (FN) burst into the frontline of French politics, and in 2002 he famously eliminated Socialist Lionel Jospin in presidential elections to make the run-off against right-winger Jacques Chirac.
Nicknamed “the devil of the Republic” by opponents, he was often openly racist, made no secret of anti-Semitic views, for which he received criminal convictions, and boasted of torturing prisoners during the war against Algeria.
(AFP)
Read more on FRANCE 24 English
Read also:
Death of far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen’s sparks celebrations – and controversy
‘Thunderclap’: The day Jean-Marie Le Pen staged the biggest upset in French election history
From colonial fighter to far-right leader: Jean-Marie Le Pen’s life in pictures
