French high court reaffirms prison sentence for Holocaust-denying professor

PARIS (JTA) — France’s highest court affirmed a one-year prison sentence for a professor who questioned the Holocaust’s veracity.

The Court of Cassation rejected the appeal last week of Vincent Reynouard, who has since fled the country and is presumed escaped. It was the last of several appeals by Reynouard to the sentence imposed last year by a Caen court over a 2014 video in which he said the Holocaust may not have happened and called state commemorations of the deportation of French Jews ”manipulation of memory,” France 3 reported.

Reynouard has lost his license to teach in the public education system over repeated Holocaust denials.

The court’s ruling came amid protests over a Paris university readmitting a student who had been expelled for anti-Semitic rhetoric.

Earlier this month, the Sciences Po University agreed to readmit a student, Amira Jumaa, who is under disciplinary review for writing hateful remarks about Jews on Facebook last year. Jumaa, a citizen of Kuwait, also was fired over the posts by the French consulate in New York, where she was working in an internship.

Sciences Po allowed Jumaa to continue to study at the institution while its disciplinary board, which had suspended Jumaa last year, decides on her appeal of the sanctions.

The Sciences Po chapter of the Union of Jewish Students of France, or UEJF, protested the move in a statement posted on the group’s Facebook page titled “No to readmitting an anti-Semitic student.”

Jumaa was suspended after writing “You don’t belong anywhere in this world — that’s why you guys are scums and rats and discriminated against wherever you are. Do not blame it on the poor Palestinians.”

In response to being accused of racism, Jumaa wrote: “First of all you dispersed rat, i am not an immigrant from France. I am from Kuwait so my country can buy you and your parents and put you in ovens.”