France may enforce its own Donald Trump-style ‘Muslim travel ban’ if far-right leader Marine Le Pen wins the election
FRANCE’S National Front would consider imposing a "Muslim travel ban" if Marine Le Pen is elected president this year, one of her senior aides has admitted.
Steeve Briois, who is part of the far-right leader’s campaign team, said US President Donald Trump’s controversial policy could work in Europe.
"Why not?" Mr Briois told AFP, France’s national news agency. "We not living in the word of Care Bears anymore. We are in a horrible world.
"So from time to time we must take authoritarian measures, even if they shock," said the mayor of the northern town of Henin-Beaumont, where Ms Le Pen has consistently failed to become an MP.
Despite this, she feels she can become president of France in May on an agenda of clamping down on Islam and keeping Muslims from former colonies out.
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Mr Brios continued: "It is true that the United States is also a target for jihadists, so if Trump wants to protect it by forbidding the arrival of these people from these countries, he is free to do that.
"Obviously it is unfortunate for those who have nothing to do with that," he added.
Mr Briois’s comments on Thursday night follow revelations that the alleged terrorist suspected of murdering six Muslims in a mosque in Quebec, Canada, was a fan of both Ms Le Pen and Mr Trump.
Alexandre Bissonnette, 27, was known as a right-wing troll who mocked refugees and feminists online and was particularly drawn to Ms Le Pen’s extremism.
Mr Trump promised at one point in his own campaign to bar all Muslims from entering the US.
His latest decree banning Muslims from seven Muslim-majority countries has sparked uproar across the world, not least in France.
The French foreign ministry has warned French citizens with a passport from any of the blacklisted countries to avoid trying to get to the US.
Mr Trump has insisted the measure is not a "Muslim ban", saying it is about fighting terrorism not religion.
In December 2015, he made the claim that Paris and London contained no-go zones that had been taken over by Muslims.
Mr Trump said: "They have sections in Paris which are radicalised where the police refuse to go there because they're petrified.
"We have places in London and other places that are so radicalised the police are afraid for their own lives."
Marine Le Pen is predicted to get through the first round of the May Presidential election, but then faces a tougher challenge in the second.
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