Jail for Leclere's racist slur

The French National Front (FN) and Anne-Sophie Leclere on Wednesday said that they would appeal a court's decision to sentence Leclere to jail and to fine the FN for racist comments made by the politician.

A court in French Guiana - a French territory in South America bordering Brazil and Suriname - on Tuesday convicted the former local election candidate of racism for comparing France's justice minister to a monkey. Justice Minister Christiane Taubira was born in French Guiana and founded the local Walwari party, which filed the lawsuit.

As well as nine months behind bars, Leclere was also banned from holding political office for five years and fined 50,000 euros ($68,000). The sentence exceeded prosecutors' demands. Leclere was not present in the court in Cayenne, the capital of French Guiana.

"It's completely disproportionate; I was really shocked to hear about the sentence. Criminals are sentenced and they get an [electronic monitoring] bracelet, and they give me prison," Leclere told the French AFP news agency.

Justice Minister Taubira is France's most senior black politician. She is also one of comparatively few members of the French cabinet not to hail from President Francois Hollande's Socialist party. Taubira is a prominent critic of the far-right National Front, and often faces criticism from the French right in turn.

Leclere compared Taubira to a monkey in a television interview late last year, and also posted a picture to her Facebook page showing a baby monkey with the caption "At 18 months" and then an image of Taubira captioned "Now".

"The photo was posted on my Facebook page and I took it off a few days later. I was not the creator of this photograph," Leclere later said of the incident.

FN fined, also appealing

The National Front, seeking a more moderate reputation under new leader Marine Le Pen, expelled local election candidate Leclere once her actions courted controversy - and said on Wednesday that fining the party 30,000 euros was not acceptable.

"The National Front never gave Mrs Leclere authorization to make those comments," FN vice-president Florian Philippot told RMC radio, also calling the verdict "a political sentence."

"That she (Leclere) be condemned politically, we did that. That she be condemned judicially, probably - but not in these proportions. It's grotesquely disproportionate, it just doesn't make sense," Philippot said.

Both Leclere and the FN also criticized the decision to hold the trial in Cayenne, saying that this meant they could not organize a proper defense.

French government spokesman Stephane Le Foll refused to comment on Tuesday's sentence explicitly, instead criticizing the FN and Leclere over the initial incident.

"What's revolting is what was said by this FN candidate. To compare Christiane Taubira to a monkey is perfectly revolting, unacceptable and reprehensible," Le Foll said.

Leclere, a shop owner in the Belgian border town of Rethel in the Ardennes, was the FN's lead candidate for Rethel when she made the remarks.

The FN scored just 7 percent of the vote in March's municipal elections, but only fielded candidates in certain constituencies where it expected to score well. In the European Parliament elections in May, the FN narrowly emerged as France's strongest single party. However, the FN still scored less than 25 percent support, even while a meager 42 percent of eligible voters actually cast ballots. France usually boasts exemplary election turnout; almost 80 percent of eligible voters took part in the 2012 presidential election, for instance.

msh/dr (AFP, dpa, Reuters)