The 53-year-old man was arrested by Scottish police on the basis of “French intelligence”, says a source familiar with the case, confirming information from the weekly Marianne. “He was arrested in the area of Anstruther”, a small fishing port north of Edinburgh, where he was living under a false identity, “on the basis of an arrest warrant” issued by France, a spokesman for Police Scotland said.
His hunt, led by the Central Office for Combating Crimes against Humanity and Hate Crimes (OCLCH), began in August 2020 when a “Reynouard is right” tag was found on the Oradour memorial. sur-Glane (Haute-Vienne), whose population had been massacred by the SS Das Reich division on June 10, 1944. In several videos posted on the Internet, Vincent Reynouard had questioned this massacre.
Close cooperation between the French and British justice systems was necessary to achieve his arrest. “There is no criminalization of Holocaust denial in the UK, but thanks to an old extract from a judgment of the Caen Court of Appeal in 2015”, which sentenced Vincent Reynouard to a year in prison for denying crimes against humanity, “we were in able to convince the British to pick him up,” explained General Jean-Philippe Reiland, head of the OCLCH.
He refused his extradition
During his appearance before a judge in Edinburgh, Vincent Reynouard refused extradition to France, Mr Reiland said. He was imprisoned pending a new hearing with a view to his eventual surrender to the French authorities.
“I was very keen on his arrest. He still publishes a lot of hate messages on the Internet, where he has a large audience,” said General Reiland, especially on the Russian social network VKontakte or the American (ultraconservative and conspiratorial) Gab.