Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of France’s far-right National Rally (RN) party, has has died aged 96, his family has said.
Le Pen, who led the party from 1972 to 2011 when it was called National Front (FN), had previously been taken to hospital with suspected heart problems.
Le Pen repeatedly courted controversy and legal action with his views on the Holocaust, which he described as a “mere detail” in the history of the Second World War, and his lauding of France’s wartime government at Vichy that collaborated with the country’s Nazi occupiers.
He shocked France when he unexpectedly reached the presidential election run-off vote against Jacques Chirac in 2002, being succeeded as party chief by his daughter, Marine Le Pen, in 2011. He was honourary president of the party until 2015.
Marine has since run for the presidency three times and turned the party into one of the country’s main political forces.
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