France’s Le Pen slams ‘witch hunt’ as her political ban dominates rival rallies

PARIS – French far-right leader Marine Le Pen on April 6 vowed to pursue her presidential ambitions after she was found guilty of embezzlement and banned from standing for office, telling a rally her party is the target of a “witch hunt”.

Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) party and centrist and left-wing groups held rival meetings amid renewed tensions six days after a Paris court convicted the 56-year-old of diverting European Union Parliament funds.

Polls have made the RN figurehead the front runner ahead of a presidential election in two years and the court sentence has stunned France’s political establishment.

Le Pen spoke at one rally in central Paris to condemn the sentences against her and other RN officials.

Her opponents backed the court decision.

“If you steal, you pay,” former prime minister Gabriel Attal told his supporters.

Le Pen, 56, was given a four-year jail term, with two years suspended, and banned from public office for five years.

“I won’t give up,” Le Pen told followers in a Paris square with the golden dome of the Hotel National des Invalides in the background.

She said a “witch hunt” was behind the conviction.

“It is not a judicial decision, it is a political decision,” she told supporters waving French flags and chanting “Marine! Marine!”.

Mr Jordan Bardella, Le Pen’s deputy and RN chief, said there were 10,000 people at the rally.

The police gave a figure of 7,000, but people at the rally said they had come from across France to support Le Pen.

Mr Bardella, 29, said that the party did not want to “discredit all judges” but the conviction was “a direct attack on democracy and a wound to millions of patriotic French people”.

Amid the divisive debate over the effect of the sentence on the election, the judges who convicted Le Pen have received death threats.

US President Donald Trump also called the sentence a “witch hunt” by “European leftists using lawfare to silence free speech”.

President Emmanuel Macron has insisted, however, that the French judiciary is “independent”.

The Paris Court of Appeal has said it would examine Le Pen’s case in time for her to contest the 2027 election if the conviction is overturned or the punishment changed.

Dangerous party

Left-wing and centrist parties staged counter gatherings against the far right.

At a meeting of Mr Macron’s Renaissance party in a Paris suburb, Mr Attal accused the far right of “attacking our judges, attacking our institutions”.

He denounced “unprecedented interference” in French affairs, pointing to support for Le Pen from the likes of Mr Trump and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Another left-wing gathering in Paris against the far-right drew about 3,000 people, according to the police.

“The far right is a dangerous party, dangerous for democracy and dangerous for the rule of law,” France Unbowed coordinator Manuel Bompard told the event.

Ahead of the rally on April 6, Le Pen urged supporters to take inspiration from the non-violent campaign in the US for equal rights for black Americans.

“We will follow the example of Martin Luther King, who defended civil rights,” she told members of Italy’s hard-right League party, who were meeting in Florence, via video-link.

Le Pen has also compared herself with late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison in 2024 after being jailed under President Vladimir Putin.

Le Pen has worked to turn the RN into an electable force and rid it of the legacy of her father, co-founder

Jean-Marie Le Pen, who died in January

and was frequently accused of racism.

The latest survey by pollster Elabe for broadcaster BFMTV, released on April 5, showed her with up to 36 per cent of the vote.

But now Le Pen risks seeing years of progress undone, observers say.

Analysts say Le Pen will be forced to play the victim card to retain the support of her voters.

The RN is the largest single party in Parliament and could complicate life for Prime Minister Francois Bayrou, who does not have a majority in the Lower House. AFP