Family feud rankling French far-right party deepened by expulsion

Paris (dpa) - A decision by the National Front‘s executive body to expel party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen set off a fresh firestorm of accusations Friday, as the 87-year-old politician dug in his heels and promised to challenge the ruling in court.Rebuffing suggestions that the decision had stripped him of his title as honorary president, Jean-Marie Le Pen said in an interview on RTL radio Friday that his daughter and current party president Marine Le Pen had, "directed the firing squad from afar.""She made the decision, herself," Jean-Marie Le Pen said of his daughter, who did not attend the executive body tribunal on Thursday in Nanterre, north-west of Paris. Hours after the hearing ended, the body ruled that the elder Le Pen would be expelled.Florian Philippot, the far-right party‘s second in command, called the decision "logical" during an interview Friday with French broadcaster BFM-TV, saying that Jean-Marie Le Pen "went from provocation to provocation."The latest row began five months ago when Jean-Marie Le Pen repeated remarks he had made in the past that belittled the significance of the Holocaust, calling the Nazi gas chambers a "detail" of history. He has been convicted for anti-Semitic and racist statements multiple times in the years since founding the National Front in 1972.But the most recent remarks tested the patience of his daughter, who has tried to give the National Front a more moderate sheen in the run-up to regional elections in December and presidential polls in 2017.Marine Le Pen is positioning her party to be attractive to disillusioned Republican (formerly the Union for a Popular Movement, UMP) voters, political scientist and right-wing extremism researcher Jean-Yves Camus told dpa. "But on matters of content, the ideology is the same," he added.Her strategy has been marred by the ongoing feuding, in which the elder Le Pen has repeatedly expressed shame at his daughter‘s actions and she has retaliated by saying her father was committing "political suicide.""This will hijack the political calendar," Camus said of the latest dispute. Jean-Marie Le Pen has vowed to bring the case to court - where he has won the last three legal battles in order to stay in his party.