Jean-Marie Le Pen excluded from French extreme-right party

The complaints targeted recent public statements by Le Pen, including those in which he downplayed Nazi gas chambers and insulted his daughter and the party’s No. 2 figure Florian Philippot – whom father Le Pen openly distrusts.

“She didn’t want to take part because it’s wicked to kill your papa, so she didn’t kill her father directly, she had him killed by her henchmen”.

National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen is to keep up his legal fight to stay in the French far-right party despite being excluded for a second time, keeping alive a family feud that has dogged his daughter’s campaign to become president of France.

“And he is also deliberately coming out with comments which are absolutely in contradiction with the line of Marine Le Pen, who is trying to make her party look normal, a party like the other parties, what she calls “a strategy of de-demonisation” or “de-diabolisation”.

Marine Le Pen, leader of the party her 87-year-old father jointly founded, succeeded in ousting him for his alleged anti-semitic views on Thursday after months of bitter political and legal battles. But he always comes back, sometimes taking them to court and winning.

However, Mr Le Pen has more often been compared to King Lear as he struggles to retain control of the party’s direction after surrendering the leadership to his daughter in 2011. “This movement is heavily endebted to everything he did for the past decade”.

“I haven’t received notification of the decision yet”.

The former Foreign Legion-naire’s inflammatory speeches had made him the figurehead of France’s far right since he co-founded the FN in 1972.

Gollnisch added that he still hoped justice would prevail in this case, as it did in the past.

Le Pen handed over power within the National Front to his daughter in 2011, who soon sought to address the party’s reputation. We want to be in the field to prepare the upcoming regional elections, which look quite good for the party.

Le Pen tried to defend himself against a list of 15 allegations, which his lawyer, Frederic Joachim described as “a political assassination”. “At some point, we need to clarify things and we have to restore order within the party even if it affects him”, Mellies said.

“After deliberations, the National Front executive bureau, convened in a disciplinary forum, decided, through the required majority, on the exclusion of Mr. Jean-Marie Le Pen as a member of the National Front”.

In a sign of how deep the rift with his daughter had become, he told a local newspaper on Sunday that he would not vote for her in 2017 presidential elections.