Perinçek Fined Over Genocide Remarks

A Swiss court has convicted nationalist Turkish politician Doğu Perinçek of racial discrimination for denying that mass killings of Armenians in Turkey in 1915 amounted to genocide.

He was on trial for remarks he made in a public speech in Lausanne in 2005. He described the claims of Armenian genocide as an "international lie". Perinçek has presented the court a mass documentation, which he claims to prove the lack of genocide. "I have not denied genocide because there was no genocide," he told the court earlier this week.

He was given a suspended sentence and fined 2 450 US dollars.

Swiss newspaper Le Temps quoted Perinçek as saying "this judge is not impartial. This is a racist and imperialist ruling".

The case will be brought to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), his lawyer Laurent Moreillon said.

Decades long debate

The Swiss parliament, along with more than a dozen countries, has labelled the killings as genocide. Turkey firmly rejects the genocide allegation.

Perincek, the head of the Turkish Workers' Party, had denied the charges.

Armenians say Ottoman Turks killed 1.5 million of their people in genocide during World War I, either through systematic massacres or through starvation.

More than a dozen countries, various international bodies and many Western historians agree that it was genocide.

Turkey says there was no genocide. It acknowledges that many Armenians died, but says the figure was below one million. A law criminalizing the denial of genocide was adopted in 2003 by the parliament in the Swiss canton of Vaud, where Perinçek made his remarks.

Twelve Turks prosecuted in Switzerland on similar charges in 2001 were acquitted.(EÖ/TK/EÜ)