Ex-French far-right candidate sentenced to jail over 'monkey' slur

A former French local election candidate for the far-right National Front has been sentenced to nine months in prison for comparing the country's black justice minister to a monkey.

The court decision has sparked controversy in France, with anti-discrimination associations welcoming it as a reminder that racism should not be allowed to flourish but the party itself denouncing the move as "grotesquely disproportionate" and politically motivated.

Anne-Sophie Leclere provoked a storm last year when she compared Christiane Taubira to a monkey on French television and admitted to posting a photo-montage on Facebook that showed the justice minister, who is from French Guiana, alongside a baby chimpanzee.

The caption underneath the baby monkey said "At 18 months," while the one under Taubira's photograph read "Now".

Leclere had been an FN candidate in Rethel in the northeastern Ardennes region for 2014 local elections, but the party soon dropped her and went on to do well in the March polls.

A court in Cayenne - the capital of French Guiana - sentenced her to nine months in jail, barred her from standing in elections for five years and fined her 50,000 euros, around $AUD72,000.

The court went well beyond the demands of prosecutors, who had asked for a four-month jail sentence, five years of ineligibility and a 5,000-euro fine.

Leclere, who was not present in the court, said on Wednesday that she would appeal the verdict.

"It's completely disproportionate, I was really shocked to hear about the sentence. Criminals are sentenced and they get an (electronic monitoring) bracelet, and they give me prison," she told AFP.

In her television appearance last year, Leclere said she would prefer to see Taubira "in a tree swinging from the branches rather than in government."

"She is wild," Leclere said, adding: "I have black friends and it doesn't mean I call them monkeys."

Leclere has since defended her comments, saying that while clumsy, they were not racist.

She said the photo-montage was a "joke" and added: "The photo was posted on my Facebook page and I took it off a few days later. I was not the creator of this photograph."