A French Holocaust denier living in Scotland has been arrested after fleeing authorities across the channel in the wake of being convicted under anti-Nazi laws. After a two year search, Vincent Reynouard was arrested in Fife on Thursday.
Reynouard had been given a four-month jail term in November 2020 and a further six-month spell in January 2021.
Holocaust denial has been a criminal offence in France since 1990, and Reynouard has been convicted on numerous occasions. His conviction was in relation to a series of antisemitic posts on social media.
Police Scotland confirmed that on Thursday a 53-year-old man was arrested on behalf of the French authorities, and that he appeared before Edinburgh Sheriff Court later that day.
“He was arrested at an address in the Anstruther area of Fife on a Trade and Co-operation Agreement warrant issued in France,” the spokesman said.
General Jean-Philippe Reiland of the OCLCH, the arm of the French gendarmerie that specialises in hate crime and war crimes, said: “Vincent Reynouard was able to be arrested thanks to a huge effort of international co-operation and, in particular, thanks to our British counterparts.
“Despite the legal difficulties that may exist, the Office (OCLCH) will not let go of the ideologues who propagate hatred, wherever they are.”
And the Campaign Against Antisemitism welcomed the arrest and described Reynouard as a “despicable Holocaust denier who has repeatedly been convicted by French courts”.
The charity said his first Holocaust denial conviction was in 1991 for distributing leaflets denying the existence of gas chambers at concentration camps.
The French press claimed he had been working as a private tutor while living under a false identity while in the UK.
A Campaign Against Antisemitism spokesman said: “For him to have evaded justice, only to settle in the UK as a private tutor teaching children, is intolerable, which is why we worked with French Jewish organisations to secure his extradition so that he faces the consequences of his abhorrent incitement.”
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