French authorities have opened an investigation into a controversial comedian who mocked the killing of U.S. journalist James Foley and showed footage of it in a video, reports Yahoo! News.
Dieudonne M'Bala M'Bala said that decapitation "symbolises before anything progress, access to civilisation" in the video that appeared on the internet last month.
The Paris prosecutor's office said police were starting a preliminary investigation into Dieudonne on the grounds that he had condoned terrorism.
Foley was beheaded by Islamic State militants last month after being kidnapped while covering the Syrian conflict and held for 20 months. The act caused outrage around the world.
In the video, called "Foley That Was," Dieudonne said the 2011 killing of ex-Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and that of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, who was hanged in 2006, never aroused the same indignation as Foley's death.
"The Rothschild Mafia says no, that's ok, but James Foley, that's too much," Dieudonne says, an apparent but unexplained reference to the prominent Jewish banking family.
Read more of AFP this report published by Yahoo! News.