FN says Jean-François Jalkh, only named acting president this week, is preparing legal action over comments reportedly made 17 years ago

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Marine Le Pen’s replacement as acting leader of Front National during the final days of her French presidential campaign has stepped down to prepare his legal action over allegations about past statements he made apparently questioning the existence of Nazi gas chambers.

Jean-François Jalkh, who was named interim president of the far-right party after Le Pen’s decision to stand aside, reportedly told an academic in an interview in 2000: “I believe we should be able to discuss this issue [of gas chambers].”

In comments unearthed by a journalist at La Croix newspaper and republished in Le Monde, Jalkh, an MEP, argued he was not a Holocaust denier but had spoken to a chemistry expert about Zyklon B, which was used in the extermination chambers.

Le Pen is a far-right Holocaust revisionist. Macron isn’t. Hard choice? | Hadley Freeman Read more

“I consider that from a technical standpoint it is impossible – and I stress, impossible – to use it in mass exterminations. Why? Because you need several days to decontaminate a space … where Zyklon B has been used.”

On Friday Louis Aliot, a Front National vice president, said Jalkh would not take up his post. “He [Jalkh] wants to defend himself and he will be filing a legal complaint because he feels his honour has been attacked, and I can tell you he firmly and formally contests what he is accused of,” Aliot told BFM TV.

Steeve Briois, another of the party’s four vice-presidents, would take Jalkh’s place, Aliot said.

The incident has revived accusations of denialist tendencies in Front National that Le Pen has tried to quash since she took over as leader in 2011 and undertook a major public relations effort to detoxify the party and rid it of its jackbooted, antisemitic overtones.

Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie, FN’s founder, has repeatedly been convicted for hate speech and contesting crimes against humanity, including for describing the gas chambers as a “detail” of history and the Nazi occupation as “not particularly inhumane”.

In the interview, Jalkh also reportedly praised the “rigour” of the arguments used by Robert Faurisson, a Holocaust denier and former academic convicted of contesting crimes against humanity after questioning the systematic killing of Jews with gas during the second world war.

Who is Marine Le Pen? Party: Front National. Far-right

Age: 48 Career: Lawyer by training; 1998 regional councillor; 2004 MEP; 2011 president of FN; 2012 presidential candidate (18% in first round) In brief: Imperious, theatrical, ruthlessly determined; France first Policies: Priority for French nationals in jobs, housing, welfare; extra tax on foreign workers and imports; proportional representation in parliament; negotiate with EU for return of “full sovereignty” including the franc; in-out referendum on EU membership; cut immigration to 10,000 a year; restrict nationality rights; hire 15,000 police; create 40,000 more prison places Want to know more? Read a full profile

Jalkh replaced Marine Le Pen as the party’s president after she stepped aside from the role on Monday in an attempt to broaden her appeal to non-FN voters and to concentrate on running her campaign for the second round of the presidential election.

Jalkh told Le Monde this week that he had no recollection of the interview. “It’s the first time I’ve heard of this rubbish,” he said. “I have no memory of this. I may have given an interview but these are not my preferred subjects.”

He added: “It’s possible that I saw these people in 2000, but I can see students who show up wanting to talk about Zyklon B coming. I’m no FN beginner, I’ve been here since 1974: I challenge anyone to say they’ve heard me talk about these matters.”

Richard Ferrand, the campaign manager for Le Pen’s second-round opponent, the independent centrist Emmanuel Macron, said before Jalkh stepped down that his nomination showed Front National still had “issues of democratic hygiene” to deal with.

“Marine Le Pen has had herself replaced by someone who resembles her, who has sectarian ideas, divisive ideas,” Ferrand said on French television, adding that Jalkh’s acting presidency of the party should be terminated.

But Florian Philippot, Le Pen’s closest adviser, dismissed the accusations as “a campaign polemic”, describing Jalkh as “serious, moderate … a patriot and an honest man”. David Rachline, Le Pen’s campaign manager, denounced “a fake scandal” and said Jalkh had filed a formal complaint.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Students hold a banner, reading: ‘Neither homeland, nor boss - Neither Le Pen, nor Macron’ during a protest in Paris on Thursday. Photograph: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images

Magali Boumaza, the academic who carried out the interview, told Le Monde she had contemporaneous notes and a tape recording of her interview with Jalkh, which she said had taken place at FN’s former headquarters in Saint-Cloud, just outside Paris.

She said the interview had lasted three hours and it was Jalkh who spontaneously raised the topic of the gas chambers. Her article had been published in an academic review in 2005 and had not been contested at the time, she said.

On Thursday Le Pen and Macron clashed over fishing as the campaign resumed. Le Pen was up before dawn for a brief trip on a Mediterranean trawler.

Pledging that France would take back control of its maritime and fisheries policy if she won in the second round, she said her grandfatather had been a fisherman so she was “in her element”, and again criticised her opponent’s pro-market, free-trade economic programme.

Macron hit back on Twitter, saying her proposals to take France out of the EU would destroy France’s fishing industry. “Have a nice trip. Leaving Europe as she proposes is the end of French fishing,” he said.

The anti-immigration, anti-EU Le Pen finished second to Macron in the first round of the elections last Sunday. Current polls suggest she is on course for defeat in the runoff on 7 May.

