Scottish Prison Service to investigate how notorious French Holocaust denier Vincent Reynouard is disseminating far-right material online from his jail cell

The Scottish Prison Service is investigating how a French Holocaust-denier is disseminating far-right material online from his jail cell.

Vincent Reynouard, 53, was arrested late last year by Police Scotland officers in Anstruther, Fife, in a joint operation involving Scottish and French authorities, after he spent two years on the run. Campaign Against Antisemitism nworked with French Jewish organisations, with the help of Lord Austin, to secure his arrest. He denied his consent to be extradited to France in a hearing in December, and today his lawyer asked the court for more time to prepare for his extradition hearing.

An investigation by The Herald has also found that Mr Reynouard has continued to post updates on his far-right blog Sans Concession, despite being incarcerated.

The blog features as its main image a photo of Auschwitz, and describes its “objectives” as “the dissemination of historical revisionism and the rehabilitation of National Socialism.”

Since his arrest in November, Mr Reynouard has reportedly posted some sixteen articles on the blog, ranging from posts on prison life in HMP Edinburgh and his relationships with fellow prisoners and guards, to extracts from what Mr Reynouard claims will form part of his memoirs.

In one post, Mr Reynouard wrote: “I dreamed of another world where social justice would reign, as under Hitler. However, we were no longer in Hitler’s time, and I dreamed of a National Socialism ‘without the camps’, a peaceful National Socialism, solely oriented towards the good of all, therefore unrelated to what could have happened contingently 50 years earlier.”

In another blog post, Mr Reynouard compared his stay at the prison to being “on vacation on a cruise ship”.

According to the Scottish Prison Service, people being held in Scotland are not allowed to send or receive e-mails, nor are they permitted to send any material that is intended “for publication”. The Service has the power to stop post being sent to a prisoner if he is found to be contravening the rules.

A Scottish Prison Service spokesperson said: “We do not comment on individuals. We can advise that people in our care do not have the right to send or receive electronic communications. They are also not permitted to send any material which is intended for publication, for the use by radio or television.

“They do, however, have access to writing materials in order to maintain contact with solicitors, family, and friends, and it is highly possible for a third party to submit material for publication on their behalf. Where we believe criminality is taking place we would report this to Police Scotland, and SPS have the ability to put in place restrictions on correspondence to and from those in our care, where we believe there is justifiably reasons to do so in line with prison rules.”

Mr Reynouard was sentenced to jail for four months on 25th November 2020 by a court in Paris and again in January 2021 for six months, in addition to fines. His latest conviction is in relation to a series of antisemitic postings on Facebook and Twitter and a 2018 YouTube video for which fellow French Holocaust denier, Hervé Ryssen (also known as Hervé Lalin), received a seventeen-month-jail term earlier that year.

However, Mr Reynouard fled the country before serving his sentence and settled in the UK, where he reportedly worked as a private tutor teaching children mathematics, physics and chemistry. Private tutors are not required to undergo background checks.

In November, he was finally arrested near Edinburgh. In the intervening months, Campaign Against Antisemitism has been cooperating with French Jewish groups seeking Mr Reynouard’s extradition to France. Along with Lord Austin, an Honorary Patron of Campaign Against Antisemitism, we have corresponded with police forces and prosecutors in the UK and Interpol in an effort to locate Mr Reynouard and bring him to justice.

Scottish police reportedly arrested him at an address near the Scottish capital, where he was apparently living under a false identity. He was brought before a judge on the same day and refused extradition to France.

Late last year, Mr Reynouard appeared in court where it was heard that he had been granted legal aid. He will be back in court next month, with a full extradition hearing scheduled for February.

Mr Reynouard faces a sentence of almost two years in a French prison, in addition to any further sentence in relation to other ongoing proceedings.

The Office Central de Lutte Contre les Crimes Contre l’Humanité, les Génocides et les Crimes de Guerre (OCLCH) — the arm of the French gendarmerie that specialises in hate crime and war crimes — has been leading the investigation.

Mr Reynouard’s first Holocaust denial conviction was in 1991 for distributing leaflets denying the existence of the gas chambers at concentration camps. Holocaust denial has been a criminal offence in France since 1990. He has been convicted on numerous occasions and his subsequent sentences include multiple prison terms and a €10,000 fine.

Mr Reynouard is alleged to have ties to Catholic fundamentalist groups that deny the Holocaust. In a recent analysis of the French far-right, the newspaper Liberation claimed that Mr Reynouard and Mr Ryssen are key members of a network of propagandists dedicated to the denial and distortion of the Holocaust.