A French court has ordered far-right leader Marine Le Pen to undergo psychiatric tests as part of an inquiry into her sharing images of Islamic State group atrocities.<\/p>\n
Ms Le Pen tweeted pictures of the court order<\/a>, calling the move “crazy”.<\/p>\n She posted the images back in 2015, including one showing the decapitated body of IS victim James Foley.<\/p>\n She has been stripped of her immunity as a parliamentarian and she could still face a fine or even jail.<\/p>\n As leader of what was then the National Front, Ms Le Pen was comfortably beaten by Emmanuel Macron in the second round of presidential elections last year.<\/p>\n Since then she has been attempting to rebuild, and the party has been rebranded as National Rally in part to try to distance it from the taint of racism.<\/p>\n According to the document posted by Ms Le Pen, the judge wants the tests to determine if she suffers mental illness or is “capable of understanding remarks and answering questions”.<\/p>\n “It’s crazy,” Ms Le Pen tweeted. “This regime is really starting to be frightening.”<\/p>\n She later told reporters she had no intention of submitting to the assessment.\u00a0Prosecutors told Le Parisien newspaper the request was standard procedure<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ms Le Pen sparked an outcry when she posted the images, which she shared in response to a journalist who drew a comparison between IS and her party<\/p>\n The other images showed a tank running over a man in an orange jumpsuit, while another jumpsuit-clad man was shown in a cage being burned alive.<\/p>\n The case against her stems from French laws against circulating “violent messages that incite terrorism or pornography or seriously harm human dignity” and that can be viewed by a minor.<\/p>\n Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n