where was Marine Le Pen when her father’s death was announced

POLITICS – Marine Le Pen was not in France when her father died. The woman who succeeded Jean-Marie Le Pen at the head of the far-right party was on the plane, returning from Mayotte, when the death of the founder of the National Front was announced by other members of her family , according to information fromEurope1 and BFMTV.

Marine Le Pen was more precisely on a technical stopover in Nairobi (Kenya), surrounded by her team and journalists who covered her trip. “Several of us journalists managed to connect to WiFi (…) and we received the AFP alert on our phones at that time. We showed it to Marine Le Pen’s advisor who was next to us, he was not aware, Marine Le Pen was not aware either”assures the journalist for the radio.

Information cross-checked by the BFMTV journalist also present, Sophie Dupont. According to their two accounts, Marine Le Pen was taken aside by her advisor, before leaving on the phone. Did Marine Le Pen really learn the news through the press? “ What I can tell you is that she learned the news after you, the journalists” said a relative, cited by Le Figaro. The three-time candidate for the presidential election, who is due to land in Paris in the evening, has not spoken at this stage. Also on this flight were Louis Aliot, RN mayor of Perpignan, and MEP André Rougé, RN delegate for Overseas.

Complicated relationships between father and daughter

“I think today with sadness of his family, his loved ones, and of course Marine whose mourning must be respected”wrote the president of the National Rally Jordan Bardella. In a press release, the party greeted its founder who “will remain the one who, in the storms, held in his hands the little flickering flame of the French nation and who, through limitless will and tenacity, made the national movement an autonomous, powerful and free political family”.

Relations between Marine Le Pen and her father had deteriorated significantly over the years, until the break, after the daughter’s accession in 2011 to the head of the National Front (FN), a party co-founded and led for 39 years by the father. Marine Le Pen has several times distanced herself from the words of her father, who was named honorary president of the party.

In 2015, Jean-Marie Le Pen, then honorary president, was excluded from the party after several outings on Pétain and repeated comments on the gas chambers “a detail” of History. Their relations then warmed up from 2018, even if Marine Le Pen remained very discreet on the subject. In November 2024, she announced her “concerns” on the state of health of his father when he had been declared unfit to attend the trial of the RN parliamentary assistants.