At the end of a ceremony which lasted approximately two hours, a grieving Marine Le Pen, surrounded by members of her family and relatives of the former far-right leader, followed the hearse to the cemetery, distant a few hundred meters. The cemetery, like the entire town center, had been placed under close surveillance by the police to avoid any excesses or demonstrations, but the day passed without the slightest incident.
The daughters of Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine Le Pen and Marie-Caroline Le Pen, as well as her daughter, Nolwenn Olivier, upon their arrival in La Trinité-sur-Mer
SEBASTIEN SALOM-GOMIS / AFP
“Jean-Marie, we love you”
Several hundred people took part in the procession which ended with applause upon arrival at the cemetery. “Jean-Marie, we love you! “, launched a sympathizer. In accordance with his wish, the coffin of the man who liked to be called “the menhir” was then placed in the vault where his parents rest, not far from the Le Pen family home in the center of the village. Marine Le Pen shook a few hands as she left, to the sound of binious and bagpipes from a traditional ensemble.
SEBASTIEN SALOM-GOMIS / AFP
The coffin carried into the Trinity Church
Among the guests was the former MP and former right-hand man of Jean-Marie Le Pen, Bruno Gollnisch. “It is moving for me to pay a last tribute to him here and to pray for the salvation of his soul,” he told AFP. “He is someone who has indisputably marked my existence,” he explains. “He was not at all consistent with the image that some want to give of him today based on two or three more or less unfortunate words, very far from being representative of all his work, his intelligence, his his culture, his warm temperament, imperious certainly, but warm. He was a happy friend! » “I came as a curious person, to pay tribute to a man who served France and who loved France,” explains Johann, 40, who lives not far away in Auray (Morbihan).
Enhanced security
Numerous police forces were deployed in the town of around 1,700 people and the port. Around a hundred of them, including a squadron of mobile gendarmes, were mobilized, according to a source close to the matter. Several members of the National Rally security service, the DPS, were also present.
Tuesday evening, several hundred opponents gathered in certain cities in France, including Paris, Lyon and Rennes, to celebrate, with songs, smoke bombs and fireworks, the death of “JMLP”, which had justified the imposing police force on Saturday. Another ceremony, “religious and of homage”, will take place on January 16 at 11 a.m. in the Notre-Dame Du Val-de-Grâce church in Paris, attached to the diocese to the French Armies. This mass, decided by Marine Le Pen and her sisters Marie-Caroline and Yann, will be open to the public.
A provocative tribune, obsessed with immigration and Jews, Jean-Marie Le Pen was condemned for several of his statements on the Second World War, and for homophobic insults. Elected deputy in 1956 under the Fourth Republic, he brought the French far right out of its marginality during a political career which marked the Fifth Republic.
