French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen was handed a three-month suspended jail sentence on Friday for describing the Nazi occupation of France as "not especially inhumane." Le Pen, 79, was found guilty of denying a crime against humanity and complicity in condoning war crimes, over the remarks made in an interview with a far-right magazine in 2005.
The veteran National Front (FN) chief was also fined 10,000 euros (14,500 dollars) for his remarks. Le Pen was not in court to hear the verdict but his lawyer said there was a "100-percent chance" his client would appeal.
Le Pen told Rivarol magazine that "in France at least the German occupation was not especially inhumane, even if there were a number of excesses - inevitable in a country of 550,000 square kilometres." "If the Germans had carried out mass executions across the country as the received wisdom would have it, then there wouldn't have been any need for concentration camps for political deportees."
The court ruled that Le Pen "tried to sow doubt over what may have been committed by the Nazis on French territory, such as the deportation of the Jews of the persecution of Resistance members, both crimes against humanity."
Le Pen also partially exonerated the German army over a 1944 massacre of 86 people in the town of Villeneve d'Ascq, saying it was the work of a lieutenant "mad with rage" over the death of comrades in a resistance attack, and that it was the Gestapo who intervened to stop the killings.
For this the court found him guilty of "deliberate historical falsification" and of giv crimes it committed." Le Pen's version was disputed during the trial by the mayor of Villeneuve d'Ascq and by prosecutor Anne de Fontette, who said it was like calling the Gestapo "the blue berets of the 1940s."
The far-right leader said in 2005 he felt "absolutely no guilt" over his remarks, and claimed he was a victim of "persecution" after he was unanimously condemned by French politicians and campaign groups.
With the help of the collaborationist Vichy government, the German authorities deported more than 70,000 French Jews to death camps, and thousands of French civilians died in reprisals by the German army - especially towards the end of the war.