Robertson and Clooney Call Switzerland v. Perincek Judgment a Victory for Armenia
STRASBOURG, France (A.W.)—The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) publicized its deliberation on the Perincek v. Switzerland case today, upholding Dogu Perincek’s right to free speech, which the court found was violated by a Swiss court in 2007. The ECHR ruling, which was delivered on narrow grounds, abstained from passing judgments or opinions on a number of issues, from whether Perincek’s statements amounted to genocide denial, to whether the Armenian Genocide could be characterized as genocide. Attorneys Geoffrey Ronald Robertson and Amal Alamuddin Clooney, who represented Armenia as a third-party in the case, called the verdict “a victory for Armenia,” because the Grand Chamber moved away from the judgment of the lower court, which had “cast doubt” on the veracity of the Armenian Genocide.
Konstantian and Robertson at the ruling
In 2007, a Swiss court had fined Perincek, a Turkish ultra-nationalist activist and chairman of Turkey’s Workers’ Party, for his public statements calling the Armenian Genocide an “international lie.” In their appeal to the ECHR, Perincek’s defense argued that the Swiss court violated Perincek’s right to freedom of expression; the court ruled in their favor in 2013. On March 7, 2014, Switzerland filed an appeal, which led to a Grand Chamber hearing in January and today’s judgment.
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