This power of this booklet alarmed the French democratic Gestapo, and M. Reynouard was promptly arrested and charged under the infamous "Gayssot Act," which makes it a criminal offence in France to "contest" or dispute certain "crimes against humanity," as defined by the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal (IMT) of 1945-46.
When his case finally came to court in 2007, M. Reynouard was sentenced to one year's imprisonment, a fine of 10,000 euros and ordered to pay "damages" of 3,000 euros to Communist Party front organisation, posing as "anti-racists" called LICRA. M Reynouard appealed, but in June 2008, a senior court in Colmar upheld the original sentence and ordered him to pay a total of 60,000 euros. This latter figure was made up of a doubling of the original fine (20,000 euros), assorted damages, the cost of a mandatory publication of the court ruling and assorted "fees." The punishment was unprecedented in French legal history.
Aghast at this blatant anti-democratic move, M. Reynouard and his family fled to Belgium to seek sanctuary. This country proved however to be as anti-democratic as France, and in June 2008, a court in Brussels found M. Reynouard guilty of "disputing crimes against humanity" for having written this booklet. He was ordered to a year's imprisonment and fined an additional 25,000 euros.
Finally, M. Reynouard was deported back to France, where he is, at time of the publication of this English translation of his "dangerous" work (May 2011) still in prison.
The reader is invited to peruse this book and ask themselves the statement, which M. Reynouard posed: "When people can think of no other way but imprisonment to get rid of a verbal opponent, it's because they have no arguments." P/B 16 pp.
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