A prominent member of an American neo-Nazi group which was responsible for projecting an antisemitic message on the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam has been extradited to the Netherlands and is facing trial.
Robert Wilson, a member of the American neo-Nazi group the Goyim Defense League, has been extradited to the Netherlands after projecting an antisemitic message onto the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. He is being accused of being behind the February incident and will stand trial, reports The Jerusalem Post.
The Polish police arrested the 41-year-old Canadian man in April as a suspect for orchestrating the February antisemitic laser projection. The message read “inventor of the ballpoint pen,” a reference to a widely-debunked antisemitic conspiracy theory alleging that Frank’s famous diary is a forgery because it was originally written with a ballpoint pen, which was invented only after World War II.
Wilson’s first court appearance is scheduled for early October. The white supremacist is originally from Canada and is a member of the Goyim Defense League, a major neo-Nazi group now based in Florida. He has a history of committing hate crimes in the United States and also in Poland, where he has been residing in recent years and where he also holds citizenship. His antisemitic hate crimes include displaying vulgar signs directed at the Anti-Defamation League while outside the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Wilson is reported to have been travelling to Amsterdam at the time of the Anne Frank House incident, uncovered by a group of Dutch citizen sleuths devoted to rooting out terrorist activities.
Wilson was first arrested in April in Poland after the Netherlands issued a European arrest warrant for him. Still, he was arrested again in July while trying to flee to Canada from an airport in Germany. He was held in Germany before being transferred to Amsterdam in late August.
According to Willem Wagenaar, an extremism researcher working at the Anne Frank House, the unclear nature of the projected message will be a “test case” for the Netherlands.
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