Le Pen rejects psychiatric assessment court order
A French judge ordered France's far-right leader Marine Le Pen to undergo psychiatric assessment for publishing graphic tweets of Islamic State violence. Le Pen has said she would not go. In a rare move, even her staunch opponent Jean-Luc Mélenchon condemned the court order.
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French far-right leader Marine Le Pen expressed outrage Thursday after being ordered to undergo psychiatric tests for tweeting pictures of atrocities committed by the Islamic State group.
Le Pen shared the gruesome images in December 2015, a few weeks after IS jihadists killed 130 people in attacks in Paris, sparking widespread condemnation in France.
The 50-year-old leader of the National Rally (formerly the National Front), who lost to Emmanuel Macron in last year's presidential vote, was stripped of her parliamentary immunity over the pictures and charged with circulating violent messages that can be viewed by minors.
On Thursday, she tweeted copies of a court order requiring her to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.
Dated September 11, it calls for the tests to be carried out "as soon as possible" to establish whether Le Pen "is capable of understanding remarks and answering questions".
"It's crazy," fumed Le Pen, herself a trained lawyer.
"I thought I had been through it all: well, no! For having condemned Daesh (IS) horrors in tweets, the 'justice system' is putting me through psychiatric tests! Just how far will they go?" she asked, repeating her view that it was part of a government plot to discredit her.
Speaking to reporters in the halls of the National Assembly, Le Pen said she felt "persecuted" by the state and would defy the order.
Le Pen dares magistrate to force her to attend
"Of course I won't go and submit myself to this psychiatric evaluation," she declared, daring the investigating magistrate to "force" her.
Under French law there is no legal mechanism for forcing a person to comply with such an order.
The prosecutor's office in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, where the court is located, said such tests were routine in cases involving the dissemination of violent messages.
But there were howls of indignation from Le Pen's supporters and allies nonetheless.
Support from Italy's Salvini, and even from her opponent Jean Luc Mélenchon
Italy's powerful far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini tweeted his sympathy for Le Pen, along with a photograph of himself and the Frenchwoman greeting each other, their arms outstretched and faces wreathed in smiles.
"A prosecutor has ordered psychiatric tests on Marine Le Pen. There are no words. Solidarity with her and those French people who love liberty," wrote Salvini, whose League party is in an alliance with Le Pen's faction.
Rightwing eurosceptic Nicolas Dupont-Aignan wondered whether the French justice system was inspired by the Soviet Union, where political opponents were thrown in psychiatric hospitals.
"Next step the gulag?" he asked in a tweet.
Even some of Le Pen's opponents expressed misgivings about the tests.
Her leftist nemesis Jean-Luc Melenchon, the France Unbowed leader who once called Le Pen "half-demented", tweeted his "total disagreement" with the court order.
"It's not these kind of methods that will drive back the far right," wrote Melenchon, a fierce critic of Macron, who denounced the court order as a "political decision".
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