The site, coco.fr, was shut down in June after being linked to more than 23,000 sexual abuse and other cases in France alone, including the rape trial that shocked the country last year.

The founder of the website Dominique Pelicot used to recruit dozens of men to rape his unconscious wife has been charged by French police. Isaac Steidl, a native of France who now has Italian citizenship,

A defiant Nicolas Sarkozy told a Paris court on Thursday that allegations of illegal Libyan financing of his successful 2007 presidential bid were a "conspiracy" and that not a single cent of Libyan cash would ever be found in his campaign.

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, on trial charged with accepting illegal campaign financing, told a court Thursday he had never accepted any money from the late Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

Sarkozy is accused by prosecutors of having struck a deal with Libya's late dictator Muammar Gaddafi to receive millions of euros in illegal funding. View on euronews

For years, the far-right National Rally tried to distance itself from Mr. Le Pen’s racist and antisemitic remarks. But after his death Tuesday, it hailed him as a visionary.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of France’s main far-right party, has died at 96. Anti-immigration and nationalist ideas that propelled his decades of popularity remain ascendant in the country, across Europe and beyond.

The French Left-wing opposition has defended public displays of joy that followed the death of the far-Right veteran Jean-Marie Le Pen.