Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s Front National, has reaffirmed her commitment to giving the French people a referendum on the reintroduction of the death penalty.

Remarking she would reintroduce capital punishment were she to succeed in the 2017 presidential election, which recent polls taken before Wednesday’s terrorist atrocity said she could win, the Front National (FN) leader said France needed to take steps to protect her fellow “countrymen”, reports Russia Today.

Speaking to French television in the wake of the terror attack on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, Le Pen said: “I personally believe that the death penalty should exist in our legal arsenal… I always said that I would offer French citizens the possibility to express themselves on the topic through a referendum”.

In a video released through the official FN YouTube account, Le Pen said: “My fellow compatriots. France is plunged into mourning, hit by a terrible terrorist attack in the centre of Paris on the Charlie Hebdo’s magazine.

“Our country has never experienced so much barbarism for decades. The nation is united to condemn this hideous terrorist attack and to share the pain of the families. The nation is united to express our attachment to freedom of information and the freedom of press against who this attack was aimed at. But the nation is also united to say that we, the French people, regardless of our origins, will not accept this attack against our freedoms and against our lives; it is the terrorists’ objectives to put our freedom and our lives in danger.

“But we have enough intelligence to know that those attacks against us are not the consequences of fate. These are trained men with a deadly ideology who are murdering millions across the world. The objective is to terrorize, censure, paralyse with fear, and for others to submit. We condemn this attack”.

The Front National, which has shaken off a poor reputation in its early years to emerge as a mainstream national traditionalist conservative party, is the only French political party to offer voters a choice on the death penalty, membership of the European Union and the Euro, and immigration.

Le Pen said: “The absolute rejection of Islamic fundamentalism must be proclaimed loudly and clearly”.