Material published by a Holocaust denier being held in a Scots prison is freely available to purchase online in the UK, despite it landing him a jail sentence back in France, a Herald investigation has found.
Vincent Reynouard was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment and a fine of €10,000 in 2007 for distributing the pamphlet.
It questions the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre, which saw a village in Nazi-occupied France destroyed and 642 of its inhabitants killed by SS troops in 1944.
The 16-page brochure, entitled Holocaust? Here’s What’s Kept Hidden From You, was sent by Reynouard to tourism offices, museums and town halls across France in 2005.
READ MORE: Holocaust denier handed second arrest warrant during extradition hearing
He was convicted under the 1990 Gayssot Act, which makes it an offence to question or “contest” crimes against humanity as defined by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1945-1946.
The Herald discovered the pamphlet for sale on a UK website called The Historical Review Press, which advertises itself as “one of the world's oldest publishers of revisionist, hard-to-find, rare and unusual historical books, cultural items and philosophical political works”.
The Frenchman was arrested in Anstruther, Fife, back in November in a joint operation involving Scottish and French authorities, following a two-year search for his whereabouts led by France’s Central Office for the Fight against Crimes against Humanity and Hate Crimes.
The 54-year-old is currently being held in HMP Edinburgh, with a full extradition hearing scheduled to take place in April.
He was convicted under anti-Nazi laws across the Channe and handed a four-month jail term in November 2020, and a further six months in January 2021.
Reynouard also has multiple previous convictions in his native country, spanning decades, for comments he has made denying the existence of the Holocaust and distortion of the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre.
READ MORE: Holocaust denier funded by supporters while being held in Scots jail
His convictions date back as far as 1991, when he was sentenced for distributing leaflets denying the existence of the gas chambers among high school students.
A recent analysis of the French far right by newspaper Liberation identified Reynouard as a key member of a network of propagandists ‘dedicated to the denial and distortion of the Holocaust’.
His name has also been linked to an open investigation into a vandalism attack on the Oradour-sur-Glane Memorial Centre, which commemorates the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre, in August of 2020.
His latest conviction was in relation to a series of antisemitic posts on social media.
Last month, Scots prison chiefs launched an investigation into how the notorious Holocaust denier has been able to continue producing right-wing material from his Edinburgh jail cell.
It came after an investigation by The Herald found that despite being incarcerated, Reynouard has been posting updates on his right-wing blog Sans Concession.
The blog, which has as its main image a photo of Auschwitz, notes its “objectives” are “the dissemination of historical revisionism and the rehabilitation of National Socialism”.
Since being arrested back in November, Reynouard has posted 16 articles on the blog.
The articles have ranged from updates on what life is like inside HMP Edinburgh and his relationship with his fellow prisoners and prison guards, to extracts from what the Holocaust denier says will form part of his memoirs.
One such post, published on December 18, is titled Memoirs of VR — Chapter 2: 1982-1986: I discovered National Socialism, and has as its featured image one of Adolf Hitler.
According to the Scottish Prison Service, people being held in Scotland are not allowed to send or receive emails, nor are they permitted to send any material that is intended “for publication”.
Although more than 25 European countries including France have laws that address the phenomenon of Holocaust denial, there is no specific law outlawing it in the UK.
Holocaust denial stretches back to the aftermath of the Second World War when French journalist Maurice Bardeche was the first person to openly write that he doubted the reality of the atrocity.
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