{"id":1182,"date":"2023-09-22T19:04:03","date_gmt":"2023-09-22T19:04:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/?p=1182"},"modified":"2023-11-13T10:49:33","modified_gmt":"2023-11-13T10:49:33","slug":"scottish-justice-or-due-deference-to-french-zionist-lobby-the-reynouard-case-hangs-in-the-balance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/scottish-justice-or-due-deference-to-french-zionist-lobby-the-reynouard-case-hangs-in-the-balance\/","title":{"rendered":"Scottish justice or “due deference” to French-Zionist lobby? The Reynouard case hangs in the balance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On 21st September, a Scottish Crown prosecutor asked an Edinburgh court to show \u201cdue deference to France\u201d and extradite a man who is accused of no crime under Scottish law. Real History blog editor Peter Rushton reports from the court.<\/strong><\/em> Este art\u00edculo ahora tambi\u00e9n est\u00e1 disponible en espa\u00f1ol<\/a><\/strong><\/em> Dieser Bericht ist jetzt auch in deutscher \u00dcbersetzung verf\u00fcgbar<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The revisionist historian Vincent Reynouard was appearing at Edinburgh Sheriff Court for a full hearing of his extradition case. This was almost exactly ten months after his arrest in the Scottish fishing village of Anstruther, where Vincent had been working quietly as a private tutor and completing his most important historical revisionist work concerning the so-called \u201cmassacre\u201d at Oradour<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was arrested in a raid by Scottish police, working with Scotland Yard detectives, at the request of French prosecutors who wish to jail him for revisionist videos concerning both Oradour and the alleged homicidal \u2018gas chambers\u2019 at Auschwitz.<\/p>\n\n\n

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None of these revisionist works contravenes Scottish or English law, but the UK authorities were heavily lobbied by the Jewish charity \u2018Campaign Against Antisemitism\u2019 and by the ultra-Zionist peer Lord Austin (formerly Ian Austin MP)<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sheer absurdity of this situation \u2013 the criminalisation of a scholar \u2013 was brought home to me by two incidents (one trivial, one serious) at the Edinburgh Court while waiting for Vincent\u2019s case to be heard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A sticker for the Edinburgh branch of the St Pauli supporters’ club was displayed in the lavatory at the Court. Supporters of St Pauli (a football club based in Hamburg) are notorious worldwide for their violent \u2018anti-fascism\u2019 and Marxism. It is impossible to imagine that a sticker promoting any violent \u2018racist\u2019 or \u2018fascist\u2019 group (from, for example, supporters of a club such as Lazio, Chelsea, Millwall or Oldham) would have been allowed to remain on display at a court!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other incident was more serious. Vincent\u2019s case was being heard in a courtroom that specialises in extradition, which of course meant that more than two hours were taken up (before Vincent\u2019s case began) by a long procession of procedural, pre-trial discussions of a range of unconnected defendants, including alleged gangsters from Eastern Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Terrorist and assassin Antoin Duffy appeared at the same extradition court a few minutes before Vincent \u2013 illustrating the absurdity by which revisionist scholars and advocates of national socialism (none of whose conduct is criminal in the UK) have been put on a par with some of the world’s most dangerous murderers.<\/strong><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

By far the most serious of these procedural discussions involved a defendant appearing by video link. This was the notorious \u2018Real IRA\u2019 terrorist and assassin Antoin Duffy (aka Anton Duffy), who in 2015 was jailed for 17 years for conspiracy to murder two ex-UDA members (Johnny Adair and Sam \u2018Skelly\u2019 McCrory) exiled in Scotland after their expulsion from the UDA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Duffy is still serving this sentence in a top-security Scottish jail, but he is also now wanted by police and prosecutors in the Irish Republic, to face charges of murdering Denis Donaldson, an MI5 agent inside the IRA, who was killed in 2006. This is why Duffy was appearing on the same day as Vincent, in the Edinburgh extradition court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

H&D<\/em> cannot yet comment on the latest specific charges \u2013 but it is beyond dispute (based on earlier convictions and years of police and MI5 covert surveillance) that Duffy is one of the UK’s most dangerous terrorists. Extradition procedures are designed for those accused of actual crimes: yet this week in Edinburgh (and in fact for the past ten months) Vincent Reynouard \u2013 a scholar, not a criminal \u2013 has been subjected to these same procedures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we have also seen with persistent abuse of the Terrorism Act by the UK authorities<\/a>, those who simply seek to tell the truth about European history are persecuted by UK authorities who choose to follow the instructions of shadowy international lobbyists rather than UK law.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Nevertheless, there are reasons to be optimistic about Vincent\u2019s case. He was very ably represented by his solicitor Paul Dunne and advocate Fred Mackintosh KC (who also practices as a barrister in England). It should of course be emphasised that Vincent\u2019s defence is (rightly and properly) based on legal arguments, not on his historical and political views per se<\/em>. As in any other such case, it should not be inferred that either Mr Dunne or Mr Mackintosh is in any way sympathetic to Vincent\u2019s opinions, or indeed that either of them have any views or expertise on historical or political matters. They are experts on extradition law, not<\/strong> on historical revisionism or national socialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Due to Vincent having already spent ten months in jail (for something that isn\u2019t even a crime in the UK!) the initial French warrant has been discharged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This initial warrant was based on his having already been convicted and sentenced (in his absence) by a Parisian court. But he is no longer extraditable on those grounds, because that sentence has (in effect) already been served in Scotland, while Vincent awaited this extradition hearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having dealt with the discharge of the first warrant, Mr Mackintosh proceeded to address the second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since it involves new charges (rather than a prior conviction) the \u2018ticklist\u2019 of the old European Arrest Warrant (now operating in revised form post-Brexit) doesn\u2019t apply. Mr Mackintosh therefore pointed out that the traditional extradition principle of \u201cdual criminality\u201d operates in this case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, the Edinburgh Court must be satisfied that the conduct of which Vincent is accused would potentially be criminal in Scotland<\/strong> as well as in France.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The judge should (Mr Mackintosh continued) draw inferences as to Vincent\u2019s \u201cintent\u201d, by looking at his overall conduct, and by studying the entire transcripts of his videos, not merely accepting the prosecutors\u2019 interpretation of certain phrases taken out of context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He highlighted one video, on which the prosecutors had based a large part of their case, and emphasised that the judge should study the full translated transcript carefully. This was a video published on 22nd February 2020, whose title translates as \u201cThe Jewish Problem \u2013 what solution?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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Vincent\u2019s counsel did not dispute that his videos contain what has been termed \u201cHolocaust denial\u201d, that some of them address the \u201cJewish problem\u201d, and that one in particular \u201cdenies\u201d the historicity of the \u201cOradour massacre\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Mr Mackintosh\u2019s central argument as to why Vincent should not be extradited began with a judgment in 2015 by the European Court of Human Rights, in the case of Perin\u00e7ek v. Switzerland<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The relevant aspect of this judgment (which involved a Turkish political activist accused of \u201cdenying\u201d the Armenian genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire during the First World War), is that the European Court spelled out the very different laws among European states regarding \u201cdenial\u201d of genocide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among those European countries that have signed up to the European Convention on Human Rights, the Court noted:
\u201cthere are now essentially four types of regimes in this domain, in terms of scope of the offence of genocide denial: (a) States, such as Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Romania, that only criminalise the denial of the Holocaust or more generally of Nazi crimes (Romania in addition criminalises the Nazi extermination of the Roma, and Greece criminalises, on top of the Holocaust and Nazi crimes, the denial of genocides recognised by an international court or its own Parliament); (b) States, such as the Czech Republic and Poland, that criminalise the denial of Nazi and communist crimes; (c) States, such as Andorra, Cyprus, Hungary, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Malta, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland, that criminalise the denial of any genocide (Lithuania in addition specifically criminalises denial of Soviet and Nazi crimes vis-a\u0300-vis the Lithuanians, but Cyprus only criminalises the denial of genocides recognised as such by a competent court); and (d) States, such as Finland, Italy, Spain (following the 2007 judgment of its Constitutional Court cited in paragraph 96 above), the United Kingdom and the Scandinavian States, that do not have special provisions criminalising such conduct.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The European Court was clear, Mr Mackintosh said, that the UK had not chosen to make any form of \u201cHolocaust denial\u201d a specific criminal offence.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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He added that in Vincent Reynouard\u2019s case, the prosecution therefore had to satisfy the Scottish court that Vincent\u2019s conduct (as alleged in the extradition warrant) met the test either for a S.127 Communications Act offence, or a breach of the peace (a common law offence).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The question of what behaviour can constitute a \u201cbreach of the peace\u201d under Scottish law has been revised several times during recent decades \u2013 and is a matter on which Mr Mackintosh has special expertise, having for example written an article for Scottish Legal News <\/em>on this very topic<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such conduct must be serious enough to \u201ccause alarm to ordinary people\u201d, and it must \u201cthreaten serious disturbance to the community\u201d. The relevant judgment was delivered in 2014 by Lady Clark of Calton, and Mr Mackintosh said that Lady Clark had reminded the lower courts that \u201cfor conduct to be likely to cause a reasonable person to suffer fear or alarm there has to be something further than annoyance and distress\u201d<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Mackintosh explained that the test of whether conduct \u201cthreatens serious disturbance in the community\u201d necessarily involves considering the full context. He quoted several cases in Scottish courts involving racial and sectarian abuse at football matches, where a crucial element was that this abuse had been directed at (or delivered in close proximity to) rival supporters, in the incendiary context of a football match attended by supporters of opposing teams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a 1981 case against communist activist Mike Duffield, the Sheriff Court had ruled that shouting pro-IRA slogans while selling the Marxist newspaper Fight Racism Fight Imperialism<\/em> and the pro-IRA newspaper Hands off Ireland<\/em> was a breach of the peace, despite this being carried out at the stadium of Glasgow Celtic, where many fans hold similar views.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And on the other side of politics, there had been a breach of the peace case involving a National Front activist selling the Young NF paper Bulldog<\/em> outside the Hearts stadium in Edinburgh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in all these cases \u2013 and especially bearing in mind recent clarifications of the law in Scotland \u2013 it was essential to assess the wider context of the words used \u2013 in Vincent\u2019s case, words used in videos broadcast online.<\/p>\n\n\n

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There were eight such videos referred to by French prosecutors in the present warrant. The first related specifically to Oradour. The second, third and fourth presented detailed arguments as to why (in Vincent\u2019s considered opinion) there had been no homicidal \u2018gas chambers\u2019 at Auschwitz, explaining that conventional \u2018Holocaust\u2019 history is based on specious evidence. The fifth and sixth discussed the \u201cJewish problem\u201d or \u201cwhat to do about the Jews\u201d. And the seventh and eighth returned to the topic of Auschwitz, the \u2018gas chambers\u2019, and broader \u2018Holocaust\u2019 themes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Mackintosh emphasised that in the case of six of these eight videos, Vincent Reynouard had not been calling for any form of action. None of the content potentially qualified as personal abuse, and none of it could be seen as \u201cthreatening\u201d. The videos amounted to a historical critique \u2013 which might well be controversial, but not illegal in Scotland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the case of videos 5 and 6, Vincent was responding to a correspondent. The prosecution had chosen to isolate certain phrases out of context, but Mr Mackintosh said that once seen in context it was clear that Vincent was stating his opposition to any policy of \u201cexterminating\u201d the Jews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The test that the court had to apply was not whether \u201creasonable people\u201d would reject Vincent\u2019s views, but whether these views threatened \u201cserious disturbance to society\u201d. Were the court to accept the prosecution\u2019s argument, it would amount to ruling that discussion of controversial arguments regarding the \u2018Holocaust\u2019 had become a crime in the UK. Mr Mackintosh said it was open to Parliaments in London and Edinburgh to make ‘Holocaust denial’ a crime, but they had (so far) chosen not to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Therefore to be criminal, Vincent\u2019s words would have to cross a further line, a further evidential test, in order to be regarded as a \u201cbreach of the peace\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n