Jean-Marie Le Pen, a leading figure on the French far right for fifty years, has died at the age of 96. His family told AFP: "Jean-Marie Le Pen, surrounded by his family, was called to God on Tuesday at 12:00." Le Pen had been hospitalized several weeks ago in a facility in the Paris region.

Former leader and co-founder of the far-right party Front National, father of Marine Le Pen, in 2002 he went to the second round of the presidential elections only to be defeated by Jacques Chirac.

He played "a role in the public life" of France, the Elysée said in a statement, "now he will be subjected to the judgment of history."

He had long since broken off all relations with his daughter Marine: the leader of the Rassemblement National apparently learned the news during the return trip from Mayotte - a French archipelago in the Indian Ocean where she had been visiting for a few days - during a stopover in Kenya, turning on her cell phone and reading a news story from the AFP agency. According to Bfm Tv, she saw the news during the technical stopover in Nairobi of the plane on which she was traveling with her collaborators.

"We journalists - a reporter from BfFM TV reported - turned our cell phones back on and saw the AFP news about the death of Jean-Marie Le Pen. We asked Marine Le Pen's press officer if he could confirm the information, but he was not aware of it. Then he got up and went to Marine Le Pen to tell her that her father had passed away." Again according to Bfm TV, she then isolated herself by moving to some seats at the front of the plane to talk on her cell phone with her family.

"I would like to be remembered as a loyal fighter for my cause," Jean-Marie said in March 2023, interviewed by the Agence France Presse. "Even dead in a wooden box, I would like not to be completely forgotten. I was a committed fighter, loyal to my cause. An unfortunate cause, by the way, but I regret nothing. You know, at my age, and having seen a certain number of things because I was a teenager in a country at war, an orphan of war, and that was also useful. The whole of my life has given me, let's say, a view from above and perhaps an indulgence that those who have read these things in books do not have."

" I believe that France has a spirit all its own that will give it a place in history , if it finds the men and women capable of supporting its cause in difficult times," he said. "Of course, it could also be (my daughter) Marine or (my niece) Marion. I don't say this because they are my daughter or my niece, but because they are strong, they have had a mental and emotional education, because you have to love to do these things without profiting from them. If there is no love, you have to do something else. Even selling tomatoes is absolutely respectable, as long as you do it well and honestly, with beautiful tomatoes."

(Online Union)

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