A convicted Holocaust denier who launched a ‘beyond the pale’ online rant about Jews will be extradited to France, a court has ruled.
Vincent Reynouard, 54, was told he will be returned to his homeland to stand trial on charges including ‘public trivialisation of a war crime‘ and ‘public incitement to hatred’.
Reynouard’s extradition was announced during a hearing at Edinburgh Sheriff Court yesterday.
The French citizen’s lawyers argued that UK extradition law only allows people to be sent back to their homeland if there is an equivalent British crime to the one which foreign states plan to prosecute them for.
Defence advocate Fred Mackintosh, KC, had previously stated there was no equivalent offence in Scotland to Holocaust denial.
But prosecutor Paul Harvey claimed the offence in Scots law of breach of the peace could apply.
Vincent Reynouard, 54, (pictured in 2007) was told he will be returned to his homeland to stand trial on charges including ‘public trivialisation of a war crime ‘ and ‘public incitement to hatred’. Reynouard’s extradition was announced during a hearing at Edinburgh Sheriff Court yesterday
Sheriff Chris Dickson has now ruled that Reynouard can be extradited.
In a written judgment, Sheriff Dickson noted that Reynouard had posted an online video entitled Jewish Problem: What Solution?
On it Reynouard could be heard saying: ‘There is a Jewish problem. A problem that Hitler saw clearly. But I take my thinking further and say that by exploiting the flaws in our society the Jews are revealing them. They are the revelators of our own shortcomings.
‘In other words if our societies have a Jewish problem it is because they suffer from a dysfunction at the beginning. It is true that the Jews exploit the situation to dominate us, even to enslave us. But by doing so, they reveal our own deviances and give us possibility to solve them.’
Sheriff Dickson concluded that Reynouard intended to cause gross offence or knew his statements may be found to be so, and that this would be an offence under Scots law.
He wrote: ‘I accepted that the respondent did not call for the extermination of the Jewish people. However, I considered that his statements in respect of that video were nevertheless derogatory towards the Jewish people.’ The sheriff said the comments went ‘beyond the pale of what is tolerable in our society’ and were ‘grossly offensive and that any reasonable person in an open and just multi-racial society would find them to be so’.
Reynouard’s lawyers argued that UK extradition law only allows people to be sent back to their homeland if there is an equivalent British crime to the one which foreign states plan to prosecute them for. Pictured: Vincent Reynouard
He wrote: ‘In such circumstances I order the respondent be extradited to France.’
The Frenchman was apprehended in Anstruther, Fife, on November 10, 2022, on a Trade and Co-operation Agreement warrant.
Reports say he was using a false identity while working as a private tutor after evading the French authorities for two years.
They began an investigation after the memorial of Oradour-sur-Glane, where Nazi troops wiped out an entire village in June 1944, was vandalised by graffiti which read ‘Reynouard is right’.
Reynouard was convicted several times in France between 1991 and 2020 for Holocaust denial and has been fined and jailed.
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