Polish police have arrested a 41-year-old Canadian national who is suspected of orchestrating the laser projection of a text on the facade of the Anne Frank house in February.

The man is thought to be Robert Wilson who is a white supremacist and a member of the anti-semitic group Goyim Defense League in San Diego in the United States.

A delegation of the Dutch police were present at his arrest on Tuesday morning which was the result of close cooperation with the Polish authorities, police said.

Wilson left for Poland shortly after the text ‘Anne Frank, inventor of the ballpoint pen’, was projected on the facade of the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam. The statement referred to a long-debunked theory that Anne Frank could not have written her diary because it contained notes written with a ball point pen. They were actually made by a researcher.

A video of of the text was shared on extreme right-wing Telegram channel the Lazer Bunker, which quickly led to Wilson. He had fled to Amsterdam after jumping bail following his arrest for assaulting his neighbour and making homophobic comments in San Diego.

‘We thank the police for finding and arresting the suspect, and justice will take its course,’ Ronald Leopold, director of the Anne Frank Foundation, told the Parool.

‘Anne Frank’s diary is one of the most important testimonies to the persecution of the Jews during World War II. The projection is an attack on the veracity of the diary and a hate crime,’ Leopold said.

The Polish justice department will decide whether or not to extradite Wilson to the Netherlands at a later date.