Holocaust denial has been a criminal offence in France since 1990 (Representational)
Edinburgh:
A prominent French Holocaust denier, who fled the country after being convicted under anti-Nazi laws, can be extradited back to France, a Scottish court ruled on Thursday. Vincent Reynouard, 54, has been fighting extradition from custody since police arrested him in Fife, east-central Scotland, in November last year.
He had reportedly been living in the fishing town of Anstruther, just north of the Scottish capital Edinburgh, under a false name.
He is wanted by French authorities over alleged offences relating to online videos some of which contain statements denying that the Holocaust happened.
The alleged offences include “public trivialisation of a war crime” and “public challenge to the existence of crimes against humanity committed during the Second World War”.
Ruling on his extradition at Edinburgh Sheriff Court, judge Christopher Dickson said that statements in the videos are “beyond the pale of what is tolerable in our society” and “grossly offensive”.
He ruled that the alleged offences constitute an offence under Scots law as they would amount to a breach of the Communications Act, and that there was therefore no bar to extradition.
“In such circumstances I order the respondent to be extradited to France,” he said in a written ruling.
Holocaust denial has been a criminal offence in France since 1990, and Reynouard has been convicted on numerous occasions.
As a student in 1991, he was convicted for distributing revisionist literature.
In 2001, he was suspended as a school maths teacher for printing and distributing Holocaust-denying pamphlets and setting homework involving counting concentration camp victims.
In 2007, while working as a chemical engineer, Reynouard was sentenced to one year in prison and fined 10,000 euros for Holocaust denial after writing a pamphlet claiming the death of six million Jews during World War II was “impossible”.
He was handed a four-month prison sentence in France in November 2020 and a further six-month term in January 2021 concerning a series of anti-Semitic posts on social media.
In August 2020, a memorial in the village of Oradour-sur-Glane, the site of the worst Nazi atrocity in France, was defaced with slogans including the words “Reynouard is right”.
He had questioned the massacre in several videos posted online.
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