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CRIME

French Holocaust denier rejects extradition move from Scotland

A prominent French Holocaust denier, who fled the country after being convicted under anti-Nazi laws, does not consent to be extradited to France, an Edinburgh court heard on Thursday.

Published: 8 December 2022 16:20 CET
French Holocaust denier rejects extradition move from Scotland
French holocaust-denier Vincent Reynouard has been living in Scotland.Photo by FREDERICK FLORIN / AFP

Vincent Reynouard, 53, who was excused from attending his preliminary extradition hearing at Edinburgh Sheriff Court, was arrested in the fishing town of Anstruther, just north of the Scottish capital, in November.

“Mr Reynouard does not consent to extradition to France,” his lawyer, who asked not to be named, told the court.

“I was instructed at about 6pm last night and I do require some time to consider the matter.

“There is a matter that is, I think, of legal significance that I need more time to consider.”

Sheriff Norman McFadyen agreed to continue the case until January 12th. A full extradition hearing is due to take place in February.

Reynouard had reportedly been living in Anstruther under a false name.

He had been sought by France’s central office for combating crimes against humanity, known by its initials OCLCH.

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 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. Reynouard first appeared in court in Scotland after his arrest last month and remains in custody.

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CRIME

Suspects in Paris Holocaust memorial defacement fled abroad: prosecutors

French police have tracked three suspects in last week's defacement of the Paris Holocaust memorial across the border into Belgium, prosecutors said.

Published: 22 May 2024 16:32 CEST
Suspects in Paris Holocaust memorial defacement fled abroad: prosecutors

The suspects were caught on security footage as they moved through Paris before “departing for Belgium from the Bercy bus station” in southeast Paris, prosecutors said.

Investigators added that the suspects’ “reservations had been made from Bulgaria”.

An investigation was launched after the memorial was vandalised with anti-Semitic image on the anniversary of the first major round-up of French Jews under the Nazis in 1941.

On May 14, red hands were found daubed on the Wall of the Righteous at the Paris Holocaust memorial, which lists 3,900 people honoured for saving Jews during the Nazi occupation of France in World War Two.

Prosecutors are investigating damage to a protected historical building for national, ethnic, racial or religious motives.

Similar tags were found elsewhere in the Marais district of central Paris, historically a centre of French Jewish life.

The hands echoed imagery used earlier this month by students demonstrating for a ceasefire in Israel’s campaign against the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza.

Their discovery prompted a new wave of outrage over anti-Semitism.

“The Wall of the Righteous at the Shoah (Holocaust) Memorial was vandalised overnight,” Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo said in a statement, calling it an “unspeakable act”.

It was “despicable” to target the Holocaust Memorial, Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF) wrote on X, formerly Twitter, calling the act a, “hateful rallying cry against Jews”.

French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the act as one of “odious anti-Semitism”.

The vandalism “damages the memory” both of those who saved Jews in the Holocaust and the victims, he wrote on X.

“The (French) Republic, as always, will remain steadfast in the face of odious anti-Semitism,” he added.

Around 10 other spots, including schools and nurseries, around the historic Marais district home to many Jews were similarly tagged, central Paris district mayor Ariel Weil told AFP.

France has the largest Jewish population of any country outside Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim community.

The country has been on high alert for anti-Semitic acts since Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel and the state’s campaign of reprisals in Gaza in the months since.

In February, a French source told AFP that Paris’s internal security service believed Russia’s FSB security service was behind an October graffiti campaign tagging stars of David on Paris buildings.

A Moldovan couple was arrested in the case.

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