PARIS 8 February 2008 Court hands down judgement on controversial far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen 

The 79-year-old Frenchman best known as the leader of his country's National Front party and frequent presidential contender, Jean-Marie Le Pen, will hear on Feb 8 whether he must spend time in jail for allegedly conspiring to justify war crimes, a violation of France's Holocaust denial legislation.

The offence carries a maximum sentence of one year in prison and a Euro 45,000 (USD 657,365) fine, but state prosecutor Anne de Fontette has called for a suspended sentence and a Euro 10,000 (USD 14,608) fine. He could be banned from holding elected office.

Some legal experts believe he will be acquitted because he was expressing an opinion.

In a 2005 interview with a right-wing magazine, Rivarol, he was quoted as saying: "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 sq km (220,000 sq miles)." The war crimes charge relates to another part of the interview in which Le Pen partially exonerated the German army over a 1944 massacre in the town of Villeneuve d’Ascq.

The paper’s director and the journalist who interviewed Le Pen face the same charges.

The case was originally scheduled to take place this Spring, but was postponed, allegedly to allow Le Pen to run for president of France.

Le Pen founded the NF in 1972 and has served as a member of the European Parliament since 1984.

He has 25 previous convictions for offences, which include grievous bodily harm, anti-Semitism and condoning war crimes. In 1987 the National Front leader described the Nazi gas chambers as a “detail of the history of World War Two.”

According to a report on the trial in London's Times newspaper, historians accuse Le Pen of seeking to play down Nazi atrocities in an effort to exonerate France's far-right Vichy regime, which collaborated with Hitler. Dec/07