French far-right figurehead Jean-Marie Le Pen dies

PARIS: Jean-Marie Le Pen, who died on Tuesday aged 96, was the far-right bogeyman of French politics, infamously dismissing the Holocaust as a detail of history and spending half a century whipping up anger over immigration.

The co-founder of the far-right National Front -- later renamed the National Rally (RN) -- was eventually booted out of the party by his daughter Marine for anti-Semitism.

A former paratrooper, Le Pen sent shock waves through France in 2002 when he made it to the second round of the presidential election, which was won by Jacques Chirac.