French far-right politician Marine Le Pen has been ordered to undergo psychiatric testing after tweeting graphic images of Islamic State executions, the leader of France’s National Rally party revealed Thursday.
“I thought I had experienced everything, but no! For having denounced the horrors of Daesh (an Arabic acronym for the terror organization), the court has ordered me to undergo a psychiatric evaluation,” Le Pen wrote on Twitter.
The court order, which Le Pen also tweeted, was dated to Sept. 11. The images that led to to the order were originally posted in December 2015, weeks after coordinated terrorist attacks killed 130 across Paris on Nov. 13.
Le Pen said she originally tweeted the images after a journalist compared her National Rally party, then called the National Front, to the Islamic State. Among them were photos of the body of James Foley, an American journalist who was beheaded by the Islamic State in 2014 after being captured in Syria. Le Pen later deleted that tweet at the request of Foley’s family.
Le Pen was charged by authorities for spreading messages that “incite terrorism or pornography or seriously harm human dignity,” and had her parliamentary immunity stripped in 2017 after an investigation. If Le Pen is found guilty, she could face up to three years in prison and fine of roughly $87,000.
Le Pen later said she would skip the test. “I’d like to see how the judge would try and force me do it,” she told reporters.
Le Pen’s National Rally is noted for its populist policies and anti-immigration sentiment. She lost the French presidential election to Emmanuel Macron last year.
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