The 1960s saw Verges supporting the new government in Algeria and sympathising with leftist revolutionaries around the developing world. At one stage, he even met Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong.
While some would question why any lawyer would choose to defend a war criminal like Barbie, his deliberate exposure of French wartime collaboration in court was later commended by some Jewish historians of the Holocaust.
More recently Vergès defended the former Khmer Rouge head of state Khieu Samphan, arguing that the deaths of up to 2 million Cambodians in the 1970s did not amount to genocide.
Jacques Vergès believed that even defendants accused of the worst crimes must be understood so as to learn from history. Photograph: Rex/Gelebart/20 Minutes/SIPA
In 1942, he volunteered to serve in General de Gaulle 's Free French Forces, travelling first to Liverpool and then to mainland Europe for the French resistance. Later, at the University of Paris, where he studied humanities and eastern languages, his contemporaries included Pol Pot, who would become head of the Khmer Rouge. Vergès briefly joined the Communist party and was a leader in the anti-colonial student movement.
In Algeria, Vergès first used his trademark strategy of legal "disruption", challenging the French colonial judges on every point, including their very presence, until "no dialogue is possible". It worked in appealing to public opinion but saw him briefly suspended from the Paris bar. He took Algerian citizenship and rose to prominence in the Algerian foreign affairs ministry.
He fell in love with his client Djamila Bouhired, a revolutionary who was tortured and sentenced to death for her role in planting bombs in cafes in Algiers. After she was freed, they married and had two children.
He was briefly hired to represent Saddam Hussein, defended Magdalena Kopp of Germany's Red Army Faction, who had been caught in Paris with explosives, and briefly acted for her boyfriend Ilich RamĂrez SĂĄnchez, alias Carlos the Jackal, the Venezuelan terrorist mastermind who carried out a series of bombings, kidnappings and hijackings.
Described as more moderate than her nationalist father, Le Pen has led a movement of "de-demonisation of the National Front" to soften its image, based on renovated positions and renewed teams, as well as expelling controversial members accused of racism, antisemitism, or PĂŠtainism.
Marine Le Pen joined the FN in 1986, at the age of 18. She acquired her first political mandate in 1988 when she was elected a Regional Councillor for Nord-Pas-de-Calais. In the same year, she joined the FN's juridical branch, which she led until 2003.
Standing as a candidate in the Pas-de-Calais' 11th constituency, Le Pen won 42.36% of the vote, well ahead of the Socialist representative Philippe Kemel (23.50%) and far-left candidate Jean-Luc MĂŠlenchon (21.48%). She was beaten in the second round with 49.86% and filed an appeal with the Constitutional Council, which was rejected despite noting some irregularities. Nationally, the FN had two lawmakers elected: Le Pen's niece Marion MarĂŠchal and Gilbert Collard .
Marine Le Pen is often judged to be generally more moderate than her father , Jean-Marie Le Pen. Commentators have highlighted how her calm image contrasts with the stereotypes generally attributed to her political family. At the beginning of her media rise, she often talked about her particular treatment as the daughter of "Le Pen" and of the 1976 attack (then the biggest bomb explosion in France since World War II ). It has been seen as a way to humanize her party.
Marion Anne Perrine " Marine " Le Pen ( French: [maĘin lÉ pÉn]; born 5 August 1968) is a French lawyer and politician who has been President of the National Rally (previously the National Front) since 2011. She has been the member of the National Assembly for the 11th constituency of Pas-de-Calais since 2017.
In 2019, it was reported that Le Pen no longer wants France to leave the European Union, nor for it to leave the euro currency . Instead, it was reported she and her party wants to change the EU bloc from the inside along with allied parties.