Le Pen is stripped of political immunity

Dozens of lawsuits and fines have not diminished the penchant of Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the extreme right-wing National Front, from making provocative statements about the Holocaust, Jews, blacks, Arabs and his political opponents. Yesterday, the European Parliament voted (420 - 20) to lift Mr Le Pen's immunity as a Euro MP. The assembly has cancelled his immunity twice before, but for the first time, he is being pursued by a foreign government.

The Munich prosecutor's office wants to try the FN leader for Holocaust negationism, a crime that carries a penalty of up to five years' imprisonment in Germany.

Last December, at the launch of a book called Le Pen, the Rebel, by the former Waffen SS member and former Euro MP, Mr Franz Schonhuber, Mr Le Pen repeated his allegation that the Nazi gas chambers were "a detail" in the history of the second World War.

The prosecutor has called Mr Le Pen's remark a conscious denial of the truth. The German penal code sanctions "anyone who presents as inoffensive any act committed under the National Socialist regime".

Mr Le Pen reacted to the vote with his usual poor taste. Asked if he would go to Munich to stand trial, he said: "On condition they guarantee I won't be taken immediately to Dachau or Buchenwald. I'm not the one who built the gas chambers - it was the fathers, uncles and grandfathers of my German colleagues."