Marine Le Pen experienced extremely painful moments on Tuesday, as she returned from Mayotte. The leader of the National Rally (RN) indeed learned of the death of her father on the plane, during a technical stopover in Nairobi (Kenya). It was journalists, alerted by an AFP dispatch, who warned Jean-Marie Le Pen’s daughter. According to “Le Parisien”, the MP then isolated herself on the plane to make phone calls.
“Then she returned to her place, tears in her eyes, silent,” says a witness. “His family is in shock. (…) What is terrible is for Marine. She was desperate, in tears not to be there. She obviously feels guilty, but who could have predicted? He often had alerts, and always got through them,” adds this source.
Wednesday morning, Marine Le Pen broke the silence and paid tribute to her father on X: “A venerable age had taken the warrior but had given us back our father. Death has come to take it back from us. Many people he loves are waiting for him up there. Many people who love him are mourning him down here. Good winds, good seas, Dad!”, she wrote.
Granddaughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marion Maréchal promised her grandfather that she would take up the torch: “Leave alone, I will not abandon the mission,” wrote the MEP in a long text published on X. “You have inspired, throughout your life, hundreds of thousands of vocations. You allowed, for a long time alone against everyone, that millions of French people were once again proud of themselves and their country. Thank you for all this,” added Marine Le Pen’s niece.
Marie-Caroline Le Pen, Marine’s older sister and Marion’s mother, also reacted on . To God Papa,” wrote the unsuccessful candidate in the July legislative elections and wife of Philippe Olivier, one of Marine Le Pen’s main political advisors.
The widow of the co-founder of the National Front appeared very marked in front of a BFMTV camera. “I feel very… not well. It’s very hard, but I’m going to try to learn to live without him, in our house that I love,” confided Jany Le Pen, the “Menhir’s” second wife. “He didn’t really harm anyone, he had ideas that were misunderstood, gestures that were misunderstood, but he was a good, generous man,” assured the widow.
Funeral Saturday in Brittany
The funeral of Jean-Marie Le Pen will take place on Saturday, in his hometown of La Trinité-sur-Mer, in Brittany. The funerals will be held “in family privacy,” said Louis Aliot, vice-president of the National Rally (RN), on Wednesday. The co-founder of the National Front had expressed in the past the wish to be buried in the family vault in Trinité-sur-Mer.
