French authorities are investigating the tweets, which Le Pen posted in response to a journalist who made an analogy between her anti-immigration National Front party and the Islamic State group.
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Le Pen was making an attempt to show the distinction between the 2 still the effort backfired, drawing widespread condemnation, & the inside minister accused her of fomenting ISIS propaganda.
Foley’s parents John and Diane said Le Pen had used the uncensored photograph of their son “shamefully” and they were “deeply disturbed”.
Foley’s family condemned Le Pen’s use of the photograph showing their murdered son, calling on the politician to remove her tweets immediately.
Soon afterwards, Ms Le Pen’s tweet of Mr Foley disappeared, but two other tweets with images of IS executions remained on her Twitter account.
The leader of the far-right National Front Party is also under fire for allegedly sharing images of other ISIS atrocities on Twitter, allowing her 830,000 followers to see brutal and bloody photographs.
One of the three pictures – which she has since removed – was a graphic photo of the American journalist James Foley beheaded by the militant group past year.
The parents of James Foley, a journalist executed by IS in 2012, expressed outrage at Le Pen’s tweets.
“It is out of the question for me to allow FN voters to be compared to an organisation of barbarians, murderers”, Le Pen said.
The prosecutor’s office in the western Paris suburb of Nanterre told AFP it had launched an investigation into “the dissemination of violent images” over the National Front (FN) leader’s series of shock tweets. It can be accessed by anyone on Google.
‘Madame Le Pen: inflaming public debate, political and moral failing, non-respect for victims, ‘ he wrote on his Twitter account. They were sent to journalist Jean-Jacques Bourdin, whom she accused of likening her party to ISIS.
Bourdin, during his show known for combative one-on-one interviews, posed a question to Arab world expert Gilles Kepel in which he suggested there were “links” between FN and IS as both sought to push the French to cling to their cultural identity.
Le Pen slammed an “operation” aimed at discrediting her just days after regional elections in which the mainstream parties worked together to stop her FN from winning.
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In the wake of the 13 November attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead, Le Pen warned that if IS was not conquered “Islamist totalitarianism will take power in our country”.
