French President Emmanuel Macron (L) welcomes Senegalese President Macky Sall ahead of the third Paris Peace Forum at The Elysee Palace in Paris, France, Nov. 12, 2020. (Photo by Aurelien Morissard/Xinhua)

A French right-wing magazine will go on trial in June on racism charges after publishing images depicting a black woman MP as a slave in 2020, prosecutors said Wednesday. 

The Valeurs Actuelles weekly unleashed a storm of controversy with the publication in August of images of left-wing MP Daniele Obono with a chain fixed to an iron collar around her neck.

French President Emmanuel Macron called Obono in the aftermath and "expressed his clear condemnation of any form of racism," the presidency said at the time.

Valeurs Actuelles however has denied the image was racist.

It said the seven-page story concerning Obono was "a work of fiction... but never nasty."

The publication's director Erik Monjalous will be judged for "attacks of a racist nature" in the trial beginning on June 23 in Paris, prosecutors told AFP.

Editor-in-chief Geoffroy Lejeune and the article's author will go on trial on charges of complicity. 

Obono and her far-left France Unbowed party welcomed the news. 

The MP said she would participate in the trial to "denounce the normalization of the sexist, racist and xenophobic discourse in our country." 

Centrist Macron raised eyebrows when he gave an interview to Valeurs Actuelles in 2019 and praised it as a "good magazine."

While he has pledged to root out racism, he also said France will not take down statues of figures linked to the colonial era or the slave trade, as has happened in other countries recently.

AFP