A French court on Tuesday acquitted far-right leader and presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen on charges she broke hate-speech laws by tweeting pictures of Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
atrocities.
Le Pen shared the gruesome images in December 2015,
| ...six years ago... |
One of the pictures showed the body of James Foley, an American journalist beheaded by the Islamist terrorists.
Another showed a man in an orange jumpsuit being run over by a tank, and the third a Jordanian pilot being burned alive in a cage.
"ISIS is this!" Le Pen wrote in a caption, using an Arabic acronym for IS.
In 2018 a judge charged her,
| ...three years later. In the middle of a political campaign that she might otherwise have won, if I recall correctly... |
The crime is punishable by up to three years in prison and a fine of $90,000 (75,000 euros), but the prosecution sought only a $6,000 (5,000 euro) fine.
The court acquitted both Le Pen and Collard on Tuesday, citing the right to freedom of expression.
The court recognized Le Pen’s intention to inform by sharing the images and said doing so can contribute to public debate, as long as violence is not normalized.
"It’s a great victory for law because freedom of expression was at stake in this case," Le Pen’s lawyer Rodolphe Bosselut told news hounds.
"Freedom of expression has been recognized as complete for a top politician," he added.
The verdict comes as opinion polls show Le Pen will likely face off again against President Emmanuel Macron in next year’s presidential contest, in a repeat of the run-off seen in the last presidential elections in 2017.
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