The man who allegedly tried to kill French President Jacques Chirac at the annual Bastille Day parade has been put under criminal investigation after psychiatrists said he was mentally fit for trial.

Maxime Brunerie, 25, was notified of the official investigation by Judge Jean-Baptiste Parlos when he was taken to court on Friday.

The president continued with the parade

An official investigation is one step short of being charged.

Mr Brunerie had been committed to a secure psychiatric ward where he had been under observation in Paris after trying to shoot at Mr Chirac at the annual Bastille Day parade on 14 July.

He was overpowered by bystanders after firing at the president's jeep with a hunting rifle near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

Mr Brunerie is said to have a number of links to far-right organisations, standing as a local election candidate for the National Republican Movement (MNR), an offshoot of Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front.

French police had also said Mr Brunerie had taken part in several far-right demonstrations since 1997 and that "extremist propaganda of a neo-Nazi" nature had been found at his home in Courcouronnes near Paris.

"I wanted to kill the president," he was quoted as telling police after his arrest, adding that he had then tried to kill himself.

He fired at least one shot from the .22-calibre rifle he had taken out of a guitar case as President Chirac passed by.