Over 1,000 people attended a memorial ceremony in central Paris for the founder of France’s main far-right party, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who died last week at the age of 96.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, father of Marine Le Pen and the defining figure of France’s postwar far-right movement, has died at the age of 96, according to French network BFMTV.

His death was as controversial as his life. Last 14 November, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the 96-year-old Front National founder, who’d been taken to a West Paris hospital after collapsing (since 2022 he’d had several small strokes),

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of France’s main far-right party and a polarizing figure in French politics, is being buried in a private family ceremony in his hometown of La Trinité-sur-Mer in Brittany.

Controversy was Le Pen's constant companion: accusations of racism and antisemitism dogged the National Front from when he co-founded the party.

More than 1,000 people attended a memorial ceremony on Thursday in central Paris for the founder of France’s main far-right party, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who died earlier in January aged 96. The “mass for the repose of the soul” at Notre-Dame du Val-de-Grace church took place under tight security,

Le Pen was convicted numerous times of antisemitism, discrimination and inciting racial violence. But the nativist ideas that propelled his popularity remain ascendant in today's France and beyond.

Once called the 'most hated man in France', Le Pen maintained that his ideas were simply 'ahead of their time'