Scotland handed over to France on Friday the multi-convicted Holocaust denier Vincent Reynouard, arrested in November 2022, and he was indicted in Paris then released under judicial supervision, according to sources close to the case.
One of these two sources indicated that Vincent Reynouard, whose extradition had been authorized on October 12 by Scotland, had been taken by plane to France on Friday in the middle of the day.
He was then presented to a Parisian investigating magistrate who indicted him for denying war crimes, contesting crimes against humanity and provoking hatred, then placed under judicial supervision, according to the second source who explained that the penalties provided for these offenses did not include detention.
Wanted by French authorities in ongoing investigations, Vincent Reynouard, 54, had fled to Scotland where he lived under a false identity, until his arrest in the region of Anstruther, a small fishing port located north of 'Edinburgh.
Non-enforceable convictions
Also requested by France for several convictions handed down in his absence (his last, six months in prison, dates back to January 2021, for a video published in 2019 in which he denies the reality of the Shoah), Vincent Reynouard can oppose these convictions which are therefore not enforceable.
His hunt, led by the Central Office for the Fight against Crimes Against Humanity and Hate Crimes (OCLCH), began in August 2020 when a tag “Reynouard is right” was found on the Oradour memorial. sur-Glane (Haute-Vienne), a village whose population had been massacred by the SS Das Reich division on June 10, 1944.
In several videos broadcast on the Internet, Vincent Reynouard, who opposed his extradition, questioned this massacre.
In October, Scottish Sheriff Christopher Dickson considered that these videos were “beyond what is tolerable in our society”, authorizing his extradition.
If British law does not provide for incrimination for negationism, the judge considered that the facts accused of Vincent Reynouard, namely the "public trivialization of a war crime" and the "public contestation of the existence of crimes against 'humanity committed during the Second World War', fell within the scope of the Communications Act.