a day ago
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
Holocaust denier who fled to Scotland back on trial
The 56-year-old was arrested in November 2022 following a two-year search for his whereabouts led by France's Central Office for the Fight against Crimes against Humanity and Hate Crimes, which began after the memorial of Oradour-sur-Glane, where Nazi troops killed and destroyed an entire village in June of 1944, was vandalised by graffiti which read 'Reynouard is right'.
His arrest came after a domestic warrant issued by a French court regarding seven videos made between September 2019 and April 2020, including one where he allegedly described the Nazi atrocities as 'crude slanders' and another where he spoke of 'the Jewish problem'.
The alleged offences included 'public trivialisation of a war crime' and 'public challenge to the existence of crimes against humanity committed during the Second World War'.
Vincent Reynouard was arrested in Anstruther in November, 2022 (Image: Herald Scotland) Holocaust denial has been a criminal offence in France since 1990 and Reynouard has been convicted on previous occasions, including being handed prison sentences in November 2020 and January 2021.
His convictions date back as far as 1991 when he was sentenced for distributing leaflets denying the existence of the gas chambers among high school students.
Reynouard was handed over to French authorities in February last year after spending 15 months on remand at HMP Edinburgh.
Back in March this year, Reynouard was sentenced to 12 months in prison at the Judicial Court of Paris after being found guilty of denying war crimes, denying crimes against humanity and inciting racial hatred.
He was also ordered by the court to pay €10,000 in damages to associations including French organisation LICRA (The International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism) and the Jewish Observatory of France. The public prosecutor had originally requested an 18-month prison sentence and a €15,000 fine.
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According to AFP, a sentencing judge was due to determine how Reynouard will serve his prison sentence.
Responding to the sentencing at the time, a spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism told The Herald: 'Vincent Reynouard is a despicable Holocaust-denier who has repeatedly been convicted by French courts.
"We are pleased that, following our previous success in having him deported from the UK to face justice in France, Mr Reynouard has been jailed. Now, he will be forced to face the consequences of his hatred behind bars—where he belongs.'
Now The Herald can reveal that Reynouard stood trial at the Judicial Court of Paris at the end of May charged with "contesting crimes against humanity".
The charges relate to allegations he made statements denying the occurrence of the Holocaust in a five-minute video clip promoting his latest book.
Vincent Reynouard's convictions date back as far as 1991 (Image: Getty) Reports in France say a verdict on the charges - for which French prosecutors are requesting a minimum sentence of eight months imprisonment and a €5,000 euro fine - will be returned on July 11.
In June last year, The Herald revealed that Reynouard hosted a pro-Nazi lecture in the southern French city of Perpignan just weeks after his extradition from Scotland.
The lecture was broadcast online by French neo-Nazi website Jeune Nation - named after the most prominent French neo-fascist movement of the 1950s - and appeared in full on YouTube before being removed for violating the video sharing platform's terms of service.
Screengrabs from the lecture, posted on extremist online platform Gab, showed Reynouard reading from a lectern in front of a flag for fascist pan-European alliance APF.
Billed as 'a fascinating presentation that re-establishes the facts and offers a completely different vision of history', Reynouard's lecture on 'The challenging politics of revisionism' had among its list of 'discussed subjects' such topics as 'The invention of National Socialist crimes to cover up Allied war crimes', 'Enlisting youth against anti-fascism' and 'The question of gas chambers'.
Reynouard was then due to give a follow-up lecture on Nazism at an event in Paris some weeks later but it was shut down by the Parisian authorities.
Shortly after his arrest in Scotland in 2022, Reynouard said he expected to spend at least 'five years or more' in prison should he be extradited back to France.
In a letter from his prison cell addressed to French far-right weekly magazine Rivarol, seen by The Herald, Reynouard wrote: 'Back in France, I will serve several prison sentences for 'disputing crimes against humanity'.
'In total, these sentences exceed 24 months (29 months to be exact). There will undoubtedly be other convictions for the same reason, because since my exile in Great Britain, in June 2015, I have published many revisionist videos likely to fall under the Gayssot law [which makes it an offence in France to question the existence or size of the category of crimes against humanity as defined in the London Charter of 1945].
'Several are not time-barred, either having been published less than a year ago or already being sued. Therefore, I expect to stay in prison for five years or more.'
