Officials seek to prosecute rightist Le Pen

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Paris officials want to prosecute Jean-Marie Le Pen for repeating that Nazi gas chambers were a “detail in World War II history.”

The National Front party leader’s controversial comments, made in an April 4 interview with French magazine Bretons, could be grounds for charging LePen with “challenging crimes against humanity and inciting racial hatred,” a spokesman for the Paris prosecutor said Tuesday. If found guilty, he could be sentenced to prison and fined.

In 1987 the far right party leader was fined $284,500 for referring to the gas chambers as a minor “detail.”

Le Pen tried unsuccessfully to stop the magazine Bretons from releasing the interview, which appeared in print April 25th . He did not specify his reasons for doing so.

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