French minister puts police on far-right leader’s IS tweets

Le Pen tweeted the images Wednesday in response to a journalist who compared her National Front (FN) party to the Islamic State jihadist group which killed Foley.

“We wanted to put images to words so that people will stop insulting more than eight million voters”, he said in his defence.

“I did not know it was a photograph of James Foley”, said Ms Le Pen in explanation. It can be accessed by anyone on Google. She did not say why she had left the other two on her Twitter account. The family issued a press release saying, “We are deeply disturbed by the unsolicited use of Jim for Le Pen’s political gain” and need the pictures taken down “immediately”.

Mr Foley was captured in 2012 and beheaded a year ago, apparently by Briton Mohammed Emwazi, known as “Jihadi John”.

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 militant group.

She said she immediately removed the graphic image after a request from his family.

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”.

French prosecutors on Thursday confirmed it had launched an investigation into Le Pen’s “dissemination of violent images'”.

Le Pen dismissed Valls and Cazeneuve’s criticism, accusing them of having “lost sight of reason”.

“Daesh is THIS!” Le Pen said in angry tweets showing executions, using the Arabic acronym for the group.

Marine Le Pen has proven she is aligned with the ISIL Islamo-fascists, by promoting the violence and murder they fetishize, and insulting the victims of terrorism.

Le Pen was campaigning for control of the National Front when she made the comments about Muslims praying in the streets, which was mostly the result of insufficient mosque space, at the 2010 rally in Lyon.

The leader of the anti-immigration National Front (FN), which won nearly a third of the votes in regional elections this month but is shunned as extremist by mainstream politicians, posted the photo on her Twitter account along with two others.