Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder and former president of France's National Front party, is to be charged over antisemitic remarks he made on TV earlier this year .
Le Pen told BFMTV on April 2: "The gas chambers are just a minor detail in Second World War history, unless one says that Second World War was just a minor detail of the history of gas chambers."
Under French law, such a statement can be construed as Holocaust denial, which is a criminal offence. Le Pen has expressed similar views over the past
25 years. In 1991, he was fined the equivalent of €183,000 for a similar statement.
Le Pen sees such punishments as another example of the "legal persecution" to which he has been subjected throughout his political career.
