PARIS (AFP)---French prosecutors launched a judicial investigation against far-right party leader Jean-Marie Le Pen for racism over comments he made in which he played down the Holocaust, a court said.
A court source said a preliminary inquiry had been launched over "racial and religious discrimination" by Le Pen for saying that the Nazis' killing of Jews in gas chambers was a mere "detail" of World War II.
"I said that the gas chambers were a detail of the history of the Second World War. That seems to me quite clear," Le Pen said on a documentary aired last month, referring to a conviction in 1987 for similar comments, for which was heavily fined.
In the new case, brought by a Jewish group and an anti-racism organisation, he now faces charges of "disputing a crime against humanity and incitement to racial hatred," the court source said Tuesday.
Questioned on the programme about the wartime deportation of Jews to Nazi death camps, Le Pen said: "That's what you believe. I don't feel obliged to share that view."
He later said he had asked the documentary makers not to air those comments.
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