AFP - Accused by the MRAP incitement to racial hatred, Jean-Marie Le Pen will be considered Tuesday by the correctional court of Nanterre for broadcasting in regional elections, campaign posters deemed offensive against Muslims.
According to his lawyer Wallerand de Saint-Just, M.Le Pen will not attend the hearing.
The poster in question was a fully veiled woman beside a map of France covered the Algerian flag on which rose the minarets shaped missiles, with the title "No to Islam".
In the last regional elections in February 2010, the movement "Youth" National Front had released the posters in the Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur and on its website and then across France.
At the time, the case had sparked protests from Algeria.
In early December, the Paris Criminal Court had acquitted Jean-Marie Le Pen, prosecuted for the same offense by Licra and SOS Racisme, without addressing the merits of the case, dismissing the two associations for purely formal matters.
The court had found that Jean-Marie Le Pen was "neither the author of the poster in question, nor the head of the sites where it was aired."Either on the websites, but the display of election signs in the PACA region, said he had no jurisdiction territorially.
At the hearing on October 28, the prosecutor had requested cons MEP and Regional Councillor of the Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur one year of ineligibility, two months suspended prison sentence and 20,000 euro fine.
Under the new procedure, the Movement against Racism and for Friendship among Peoples (MRAP) had seized on the direct quote Nanterre court before the decision is made in Paris, relying mainly on the fact that the seat of FN is found in the Hauts-de-Seine.
The trial will be held Tuesday afternoon at the 14th room.
