Turk guilty over genocide remarks
Story from BBC NEWS:
europe/6434041.stm
Published: 2007/03/09 11:31:41 GMT
A Swiss court has convicted a Turkish politician of racial
discrimination for denying that mass killings of Armenians in Turkey
in 1915 amounted to genocide.
Nationalist leader Dogu Perincek, 65, was on trial for remarks he made
in a public speech in Lausanne in 2005.
He was given a suspended sentence and fined $2,450 (£1,270).
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. "I have not denied genocide because there was no genocide,"
he told the court earlier this week.
Armenians say 1.5 million of their people were killed in a genocide by
Ottoman Turks 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 criminalising the denial of genocide was adopted in 2003 by the
parliament in the Swiss canton of Vaud, where Perincek made his
remarks.
Twelve Turks prosecuted in Switzerland on similar charges in 2001 were
acquitted.