France’s Le Pen removes tweeted photo of IS victim Foley

French authorities are investigating the tweets, which Ms Le Pen posted in response to a journalist who made an analogy between her National Front party and IS extremists.

Diane Foley said on French radio RTL Thursday that the tweets “add to the family’s pain”.

“We are deeply disturbed by the unsolicited use of Jim for Le Pen’s political gain and hope that the picture of our son, along with the two other graphic photographs, are taken down immediately”, they said.

Le Pen, who has over 830,000 Twitter followers, addressed the tweets to BFM TV journalist Jean-Jacques Bourdin, whom she accused of likening her party to the jihadist group.

Last August, IS released a video of the killing of James Foley, who went missing in Syria in 2012.

France’s Prime Minister Manuel Valls tweeted about the incident, saying the photos published by Le Pen were insulting and disrespectful. It can be accessed by anyone on Google.

Prosecutors in Nanterre, the Paris suburb, confirmed that 47-year-old Le Pen faced prosecution for “the dissemination of obscene images”.

The beheading picture had vanished from Le Pen’s Twitter account on Thursday, but two others – one showing a prisoner being burned alive and the other a tank driving over another man in an orange tracksuit – were still there.

Interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve, asked about the tweets in parliament, told MPs he has taken the case to a section of the judicial police that deals with illicit content on the internet so it can look into the matter “as it does each time these photos are diffused”.

Bourdin said both the FN and IS wanted to push their supporters to withdraw into their cultural identity.

Bourdin, who is known for his combative one-on-one interviews, raised the issue by asking Kepel about his latest book, in which the author suggests there were “links” between the National Front (FN) and the jihadist organisation.

Ms Le Pen has since deleted the tweets.

“We are only showing the hate-filled ignominy of those who (compare) us with killers”, Collard, who was also placed under investigation, said by way of explanation.

The Front National campaigned heavily over the migrant crisis and terrorism, though the party failed to win control of any regions.

IS claimed responsibility for the coordinated series of shootings and suicide bombings in which 130 people were killed in Paris on November 13.