French far-Right leader Marine Le Pen has refused to undergo court-ordered psychiatric evaluation for tweeting photos of Isil atrocities, angrily comparing the demand to methods used by totalitarian regimes.

Ms Le Pen was stripped of her parliamentary immunity and then charged in March with “distributing violent images” for tweeting three gruesome pictures showing killings by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).

On Thursday she tweeted copies of a court document ordering her to undergo the evaluation before the case goes to trial, at which she faces the possibility of up to three years in prison and a fine of €75,000 (£66,000)

“I thought I had seen it all, but no! For denouncing the horrors of Daesh in tweets, the 'justice system' is putting me through psychiatric tests! Just how far will they go?" she said in another tweet, using the Arabic acronym for Isil.

"This regime is really starting to be frightening," she wrote in a further post, suggesting that the case was part of a government plot to discredit her.

Later the leader of the National Rally (formerly the Front National), who lost to the centrist Emmanuel Macron in last year's presidential election, spoke to journalists in the corridors of the National Assembly to say she would not attend any evaluation.