The grave of Robert Badinter, the justice minister who ended the death penalty in France in 1981, was vandalised on Thursday, just hours before his induction into the country's Pantheon mausoleum of outstanding historical figures.

"Eternal is their gratitude, the murderers, the paedophiles, the rapists," read the blue graffiti on his tombstone, according to local authorities.

President Emmanuel Macron, who was to preside over the evening's proceedings, immediately reacted on X.

"Shame on those who wanted to sully his memory," he wrote.

Badinter, a lawyer who campaigned for an end to capital punishment after one of his clients was beheaded with a guillotine in the 1970s, died last year aged 95.

His legacy also includes a 1982 law to decriminalise homosexuality.

His remains are to stay

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