Jean-Marie Le Pen, the former leader of France’s far right National Front party, has been hospitalised for exhaustion ahead of a trial in which he stands accused of inciting homophobia, a source to him said on Wednesday.

The politician – father of Marine Le Pen, who later took up his mantle at the head of the National Front and came second in last year’s presidential election – will turn 90 next week.

He was admitted to hospital near Paris on Tuesday, and “should normally leave on Monday,” one of his advisers said.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, who ran the National Front for four decades and once also made it into the presidential run-off, was due to stand trial in Paris on Wednesday for inciting homophobia and insulting homosexuals.

His hearing will now take place on Oct. 3, the source said.

Le Pen, long at odds with his daughter who has tried to clean up the National Front’s image and kicked him out of the party in 2015, has already been convicted several times for inciting racial hatred.

Marine Le Pen led a name change at the party following her election defeat, after a bid during her election campaign to distance the anti-EU, anti-immigration movement from its anti-Semitic, xenophobic image under his tenure.

It is now known as the National Rally.

Jewish leaders criticised French presidential frontrunner Francois Fillon on Wednesday for suggesting Jews had in the past not wanted to respect the country’s rules.

Fillon, tipped to win the second round of a primary this weekend to become the conservative candidate for next year’s presidential election, was talking to Europe 1 radio about the need to fight radical Islamism.

“We must fight that fundamentalism, in the same way that in the past … we fought some forms of Catholic fundamentalism and we fought the drive by Jews to live in a community that did not respect all the rules of the French Republic.”

It was not clear what precisely Fillon was referring to.

France’s Chief Rabbi Haim Korsia later spoke with Fillon about his comments, a spokeswoman for the rabbi said in a statement.

Korsia said that although Jewish groups may in the past have lived in relative isolation from wider society, that was “in no way Jewish citizens’ choice, but the consequence of French society not accepting their peers at the time,” the statement said.

Sacha Ghozlan, head of the French Jewish students’ union UEJF said: “Those surprising comments raise questions about how Francois Fillon defines fundamentalism.”

“The UEJF wonders what period Francois Fillon is referring to when he says Jews refused to abide by the rules of the French republic, if it’s not at the time of Vichy (the war-time government that collaborated with Nazi Germany) when Jews were forced to hide and wear a yellow star,” Ghozlan said in a statement.

Fillon later wrote on his Facebook page that his comments had been misunderstood.

“I never meant to call into question the Jewish community’s attachment to our common values and to the respect of the rules of the Republic,” he said.

Security is one of the top issues in the presidential race following a wave of Islamist attacks over the past year and half.

Fillon, who is likely to face the far-right National Front’s Marine Le Pen in the final presidential ballot if he wins Sunday’s primary, has repeatedly warned of the risk of French Muslims being radicalised.

“There is a rise of fundamentalism in the Muslim community, fundamentalists are in the process of taking the Muslim community hostage,” Fillon told Europe 1 before his comments on Catholics and Jews.

When Nicolas Sarkozy went fishing for votes in the electoral waters of France’s far right for a second presidential term in 2012 it ended in defeat, as voters alienated by his rhetoric and disappointed by a moribund economy deserted him.

Fast forward four years and the conservative is banking on a change in mood.

Islamist attacks on French soil have killed some 230 people since January, 2015. Europe’s migrant crisis has exacerbated concerns about immigration and fuelled the rise of far-right Front National leader Marine Le Pen.

An Ifop poll in July showed security trumping unemployment as the hot-button issue of the 2017 race despite an economic malaise and Sarkozy’s comeback bid pitches him as a president who would be tough on security and immigration.

In a new book entitled “Everything for France”, to be published on Wednesday, Sarkozy courts National Front voters with a promise to limit the right to French nationality of children born to immigrants.

He pledges to suspend the right of immigrants to bring immediate family members to live in France until the European Union draws up what he says is a coherent immigration policy. And he vows to “drastically reduce” the number of migrants France accepts and end economic migration within five years.

By promising to ban the Muslim head scarf from universities and public companies he furthermore presents himself as an energetic defender of the secular state that is a key part of France’s identity.

Sarkozy said France’s biggest battle would be how “to defend our lifestyle without giving into the temptation of cutting ourselves off from the rest of the world,” a veiled reference to British voters’ decision in June to leave the European Union – in part due to concerns over immigration.

CHANGING CAMPAIGN

The Nice attack on crowds celebrating the Bastille Day national holiday and the murder of a Catholic priest in a Normandy Church have shifted the focus of the campaign away from the economy and towards Sarkozy’s strongest suit, said Frederic Dabi at pollster IFOP.

At the turn of the year, opinion polls showed him well behind Alain Juppe, a mainstream conservative and his principal rival for the Republicains nomination, both among party supporters and the centre-right more broadly.

Now, Sarkozy leads Juppe by 63 percent to Juppe’s 36 percent among the party faithful, an Elabe poll showed on Tuesday. However the primary is open to any voter who pays 2 euros (dollars) and signs a pledge that they agree with the “values of the right and centre”.

That wider constituency favours Juppe. The Elabe poll gave him 53 percent support to Sarkozy’s 46 percent, underscoring the challenge facing the one-time interior minister.

“Sarkozy is in the stronger position, even if – for now – Juppe remains ahead in voter support,” said Dabi. “The primary race on the right will be somewhat hardline in tone. That doesn’t have to mean that Juppe fails.”

“NOT SEEKING REVENGE”

Monday’s comeback announcement was vintage Sarkozy: drawing parallels between the challenges awaiting the next president with those that confronted war-time hero Charles de Gaulle, the architect of France’s current political system.

In his first term, Sarkozy’s high-energy style and abrasive manner polarised voters, while his modest attempts at tax and labour market reform and limited success fostering job creation disenchanted both free-marketeers and leftist voters whom he had also assiduously courted to win election.

After his May 2012 defeat to Francois Hollande, Sarkozy promised to quit politics altogether, but returned to the fray in September 2014 citing the need to rescue France from what he described as the socialist’s catastrophic presidency.

“I am not seeking revenge, I have no egotistical score to settle,” Sarkozy said on social media on Monday as he announced his bid.

While Juppe has kept a low profile over the summer — campaigning for the primary in November is expected to hot up in the days ahead. Juppe holds a rally outside Paris this weekend.

Sarkozy’s leftist opponents, meanwhile, have been swift to attack the former president’s social policies.

“This policy platform is a platform for the division of French people, not their coming together,” Socialist lawmaker Jean-Marie Le Guen told Europe 1 radio.

Le Guen said Sarkozy’s economic platform would favour the wealthy. Sarkozy’s friendships with the rich, powerful and the world of showbiz earned him the nickname “President Bling Bling” and caused widespread distaste on the left but also in some conservative circles.