The former leader of France’s far-right Front National, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has been fined 30,000 euros by a court in Paris for saying the Nazi gas chambers were a “detail’ of history.

French prosecutors opened an investigation after he made the remarks in a TV and radio interview in April last year.
Denying the Holocaust or crimes against humanity is an offence in France.

Mr Pen, 87, said after hearing that a probe was being launched into his comments: “I thought millions of French people had demonstrated for freedom of opinion.”

The comments led to a bitter split with his daughter, Marine, who succeeded him as Front National leader in 2011, and divisions in the party he co-founded in 1972.