French far right leader Marine Le Pen on Thursday took down a tweet showing the execution of American reporter James Foley after his family protested – but left up two other gruesome images of violence by ISIS extremists. “I learned this morning that his family has asked for it to be removed and of course I took it down immediately”, said Le Pen.
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Mr Foley’s bereaved parents John and Diane said they wanted the images removed immediately, accusing Le Pen in a statement of using the “shamefully uncensored” image to her own political ends.
The prosecutor’s office in the western Paris suburb of Nanterre told AFP that it had launched an investigation into the tweets over “the dissemination of violent images”.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls quickly condemned the photos, describing them as “monstrous”.
Foley, who was abducted in Syria in 2012, was executed by ISIS in 2014.
Party bash spokesman Alain Vizier wouldn’t remark on why Le Pen took down the Foley photo. However, two other tweets with images of IS killings remained visible on her Twitter account, and Le Pen defended her decision to post the 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.
It was Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve who went to the police, saying they should be investigated “as they do every time these kind of photos are published”.
However, Bourdin dismissed Le Pen’s allegations and called her reaction “hysterical”.
“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 photos are “Daesh propaganda and are a disgrace, an abomination and an absolute insult to all victims of…” She was responding to a radio presenter who drew a parallel between the National Front and the jihadist movement.
The anti-immigration FN received 6.8 million votes in regional elections on Sunday, but failed to win a single region after the mainstream parties worked together to block it.
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IS claimed responsibility for the coordinated series of shootings and suicide bombings in which 130 people were killed in Paris on November 13.
