A notorious Holocaust denier and neo-Nazi activist gave a pro-Nazi lecture in his native France weeks after he was extradited from Scotland, The Herald can reveal.

Vincent Reynouard, 54, was caught living a double life in Anstruther, Fife, and was remanded in custody while authorities in France launched an bid to have him extradited, citing videos where he allegedly denied the existence of gas chambers in concentration camps.

The 53-year-old was arrested in November 2022 following a two-year search for his whereabouts led by France’s Central Office for the Fight against Crimes against Humanity and Hate Crimes, which began after the memorial of Oradour-sur-Glane, where Nazi troops killed and destroyed an entire village in June of 1944, was vandalised by graffiti which read 'Reynouard is right'. 

His arrest came after a domestic warrant issued by a French court regarding seven videos made between September 2019 and April 2020, including one where he allegedly described the Nazi atrocities as “crude slanders” and another where he spoke of “the Jewish problem”.

The alleged offences include “public trivialisation of a war crime” and “public challenge to the existence of crimes against humanity committed during the Second World War”.

READ MORE: Notorious Holocaust denier arrested in Scots fishing village

Holocaust denial has been a criminal offence in France since 1990 and Reynouard has been convicted on previous occasions, including being handed prison sentences in November 2020 and January 2021.

Following a hearing at Edinburgh Sheriff Court in October last year, Sheriff Christopher Dickson said the YouTube videos were “beyond the pale of what is tolerable in our society” and were a breach of the Communications Act, and ruled that extradition could go ahead.

Reynouard challenged the extradition, but his application for leave to appeal was refused in January.

No specific crime exists in Scotland regarding Holocaust denial but the videos were branded “grossly offensive” by the Lord Justice, who said they were “patent falsehoods” and “threaten serious disturbance in the community”.

The videos included the denial of the massacre at Oradour, a small village destroyed by the SS on June 10 1944, with the deaths of 642 villagers, many of whom were burnt in a church, while another video denied the killing of 1.1 million people at gas chambers in the Auschwitz and Birkenau camps.

Vincent Reynouard was apprehended at an address in the Anstruther area in 2022Vincent Reynouard was apprehended at an address in the Anstruther area in 2022 (Image: Herald Scotland)

Reynouard was handed over to French authorities in February this year after spending 15 months on remand at HMP Edinburgh.

The neo-Nazi activist, whose 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, was indicted in Paris then released under judicial supervision. 

French media report that he was indicted for "denying war crimes", "contesting crimes against humanity" and "provoking hatred" after being presented before a Parisian magistrates' court.

Now The Herald has learned that Reynouard hosted a pro-Nazi lecture in the southern French city of Perpignan just weeks after his extradition. 

The lecture was broadcast online by French neo-Nazi website website Jeune Nation - named after the most prominent French neo-fascist movement of the 1950s - and appeared in full on YouTube before being removed for violating the video sharing platform’s terms of service.

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Screengrabs from the lecture, posted on extremist online platform Gab, show Reynouard reading from a lectern in front of a flag for fascist pan-European alliance APF.

Billed as “a fascinating presentation that re-establishes the facts and offers a completely different vision of history”, Reynouard’s lecture on ‘The challenging politics of revisionism’ had among its list of ‘discussed subjects’ such topics as ‘The invention of National Socialist crimes to cover up Allied war crimes’, ‘Enlisting youth against anti-fascism’ and ‘The question of gas chambers’.

The Herald understands that Reynouard was due to give a follow-up lecture on Nazism at an event in Paris some weeks later but it was shut down by the Parisian authorities. 

Weeks after his arrest in Scotland in 2022, Reynouard said he expected to spend at least “five years or more” in prison should he be extradited back to his native France. 

In a letter from his prison cell addressed to French far-right weekly magazine Rivarol, seen by The Herald, Reynouard, he wrote: “Back in France, I will serve several prison sentences for ‘disputing crimes against humanity’.

“In total, these sentences exceed 24 months (29 months to be exact). There will undoubtedly be other convictions for the same reason, because since my exile in Great Britain, in June 2015, I have published many revisionist videos likely to fall under the Gayssot law [which makes it an offence in France to question the existence or size of the category of crimes against humanity as defined in the London Charter of 1945].

“Several are not time-barred, either having been published less than a year ago or already being sued. Therefore, I expect to stay in prison for five years or more.”