TURKEY SPURNS GENOCIDE VERDICT

The News – International, Pakistan
March 11 2007

ANKARA: Turkey has condemned the decision of a Swiss court to impose
a suspended jail sentence and a fine on a Turkish citizen for denying
that mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915 amounted to
genocide. In the first such conviction under Swiss law, the court
on Friday sentenced Dogu Perincek, head of the leftist-nationalist
Turkish Workers’ Party, to a 90-day suspended jail term and fined
him 3,000 Swiss francs ($2,461). ‘The court case was inappropriate,
groundless and controversial in every sense … The verdict cannot
be accepted by the Turkish people,’ Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said
in a statement released late on Friday.