Marine Le Pen, the French far-Right leader, was charged on Thursday for posting graphic images of atrocities by Isil jihadists on Twitter — including a photograph of the decapitated body of an American reporter.

The move by a judge in Nanterre, a Paris suburb, came after the National Assembly voted in November to strip the National Front president of her parliamentary immunity from prosecution for tweeting three photographs showing killings by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).

The images, tweeted in December 2015 with the caption "This is Daesh [the Arabic acronym for Isil],” included a picture of the beheaded journalist, James Foley, a man on fire in a cage and a tank driving over another victim.

At the time, Foley's parents accused Ms Le Pen of using their son’s "shamefully uncensored" image for political gain.

Ms Le Pen later deleted the photograph from her account and claimed she did not know it showed Foley when she tweeted it. She said she removed it immediately after his family complained.

Foley, a freelance reporter, was abducted in Syria in 2012 and beheaded in August 2014.