A former Romanian intelligence officer has been sentenced to 13 months in prison for Holocaust denial in the first-ever conviction under the country’s 2002 law.

Vasile Zarnescu, 74, a former colonel who worked for the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) for 11 years, was convicted on Feb. 4 by a court in Bucharest for writing online articles describing the Holocaust as a “fraud.”

In 2016, Zarnescu also published a book entitled “The Holocaust – the Devil’s Bogeyman – Extortion in the Name of ‘Holocaust Money.’” In it, he claims that the death of six million Jews is “the greatest fraud in the history of the universe.”
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Prosecutors had opened an investigation into Zarnescu after a book launch at a well-known Bucharest bookstore in April 2016 was canceled. The former officer was subsequently charged last year.