France:A French court gave far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen a three-month suspended prison sentence yesterday and fined him €10,000 for saying that the Nazi occupation of France was "not particularly inhumane".
Mr Le Pen was found guilty of "justification of war crimes" and "contesting crimes against humanity" in the trial, which opened in December.
It centred around a comment he made in a 2005 interview with right-wing weekly magazine Rivarol, which angered the government, anti-racism organisations and Jewish groups.
Mr Le Pen's defence team argued that his remarks were not part of an interview but of a casual conversation.
"In France, at least, the German occupation was not particularly inhumane, although there were some blunders, inevitable in a country of 550,000sq km," Mr Le Pen was quoted as saying in Rivarolmagazine.
- (Reuters)