JEAN-MARIE LE PEN, founder of France’s far-right National Front, has died at 96, Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally, as the party is now known, confirmed on the X social media platform today.

Mr Le Pen, a Holocaust-denying anti-semite, Islamophobe and racist, reached the second round of the 2002 presidential election.

He had recently been exempted from prosecution on health grounds over his party’s suspected embezzlement of European Parliament funds.

Mr Le Pen was notably convicted in 1990 for a radio remark in which he referred to the Nazi gas chambers as a “detail in World War II history.” 

In 2015, he repeated the remark, saying he “did not at all” regret it, for which he received a new conviction in 2016.

France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Melenchon said: “Respect for the dignity of the dead and the grief of their loved ones does not erase the right to judge their actions. 

“Those of Jean-Marie Le Pen remain unbearable. The fight against the man is over. The fight against the hatred, racism, Islamophobia and anti-semitism that he spread continues.”

Left-wing newspaper Humanite described Mr Le Pen’s passing as the “death of an anti-semite, torturer and patriarch of the extreme right.”