In Edinburgh Sheriff Court, a judge has ruled that a Holocaust denier should be extradited to France to face charges of challenging the existence of crimes against humanity. Vincent Reynouard, 54, was arrested by Scottish police officers in November last year and has spent the intervening period in detention in Scotland. The French national, who has multiple convictions for Holocaust denial, has been on the run for two years. He was discovered in Anstruther in Fife, living under a false name and working as an online tutor.
Reynouard was sacked from his position as a maths teacher in Normandy in 1997 after it was discovered that revisionist texts were saved to his computer’s hard drive. He was also found to have been instructing his students in statistical formulas regarding the rate of mortality in Nazi concentration camps. His first conviction for Holocaust denial was in 1991, when he was found to have distributed leaflets denying the existence of gas chambers at the concentration camps.
Since 1990, denying the Holocaust has been a criminal offence in France. In the past, Reynouard has been sentenced to four months and six months in jail, respectively, for his denialist views. The Campaign Against Antisemitism has previously labelled Reynouard a “despicable Holocaust denier who has repeatedly been convicted by French courts”. Reynouard has been remanded in custody in Scotland and is appealing the decision made by Sheriff Christopher Dickson.
The court heard that there was no legal barrier to Reynouard’s extradition from Scotland to France, thus the judge has given the go-ahead for the process to proceed. Scottish police officers arrested Reynouard in Anstruther after a two-year manhunt by French authorities. Despite his arrest, the Frenchman had been able to work as an online tutor in Scotland, drawing on his expertise in mathematics and science
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