Le Pen refuses to have psychiatric tests over Isil atrocities tweets

MARINE LE PEN, the French far-right leader, has refused to undergo courtordered psychiatric evaluation for tweeting photos of Islamic State atrocities, angrily comparing the demand to methods used by totalitarian regimes.

Ms Le Pen was stripped of her parliamentary immunity and then charged in March with “distributing violent images” for tweeting three gruesome pictures showing killings by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).

Yesterday she tweeted copies of a court document ordering her to undergo the evaluation before the case goes to trial, at which she faces the possibility of up to three years in prison and a fine of €75,000 (£66,000).

“I thought I had seen it all, but no! For denouncing the horrors of Daesh in tweets, the ‘justice system’ is putting me through psychiatric tests! Just how far will they go?” she said in another tweet, using the Arabic acronym for Isil.

“This regime is really starting to be frightening,” she wrote in a further post, suggesting that the case was part of a government plot to discredit her.

Later the leader of the National Rally (formerly the Front National), who lost to the centrist Emmanuel Macron in last year’s presidential election, spoke to journalists in the corridors of the National Assembly to say she would not attend any evaluation. “I’m waiting to see how the magistrates plan to force me to do it,” said Ms Le Pen.

The court order was dated September 11 and requested that the tests be carried out as soon as possible to determine whether the 50-year-old “is capable of understanding remarks and answering questions.” Ms Le Pen also argued that obligatory psychiatric evaluation was usually reserved for sex offenders and paedophiles.

The images that she tweeted in December 2015, with the caption “This is Daesh,” included a picture of the beheaded US journalist James Foley, a man on fire in a cage, and a tank driving over another victim.