Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder and former leader of France‘s hard-right National Front party and the father of Marine Le Pen, has died at the age of 96, his family have announced.
Le Pen, who had been in a care facility for several weeks, died at midday Tuesday ‘surrounded by his loved ones’, they said in a statement.
Le Pen shook the French political establishment when he unexpectedly reached the presidential election run-off vote against Jacques Chirac in 2002, with his pugnacious mix of populism and charisma.
He was succeeded as party chief by his daughter, Marine Le Pen, who has since run for the presidency three times and turned the party, now branded the National Rally, into one of the country’s main political forces.
French former leader and founder of the French far-right party Front national (FN) Jean-Marie Le Pen
