YEREVAN, OCTOBER 12, ARMENPRESS. The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights will announce verdict on the case “Perinçek v. Switzerland” on October 15. As “Armenpress” reports referring to the official website of ECHR, the verdict will be announced at 11:45, French time.

It is the first time that ECHR Grand Chamber has to announce a decision referring the genocide denial. According to numerous experts, the decision of the court can serve as a precedent for similar legal cases in the future.

Doğu Perinçek is a Turkish political activist who repeatedly denied the Armenian Genocide of 1915 during his visits to Switzerland. He was found guilty of racial discrimination by a Swiss district court in Lausanne in March 2007. He was sentenced to 90 days imprisonment and fined 3000 Swiss francs. At the trial, Perinçek denied the charge thus: "I have not denied genocide because there was no genocide." After the court's decision, he said, "I defend my right to freedom of expression." Perinçek appealed the verdict. In December 2007, the Swiss Federal Court confirmed the sentence given to Perinçek. Perinçek then appealed to the ECHR.

In December 2013 the European Court of Human Rights ruled by 5-2 that Switzerland had violated Doğu Perinçek's freedom of expression guaranteed by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. It ruled that Perinçek had not abused his rights within the meaning of Article 17 of the Convention, which prohibits individuals using the rights of the Convention to seek the abolition or restriction of other individuals' rights guaranteed by the Convention.

The Court pointed out that " ... it was not called upon to rule on the legal characterisation of the Armenian Genocide. The existence of a “genocide”, which was a precisely defined legal concept, was not easy to prove. The Court doubted that there could be a general consensus as to events such as those at issue, given that historical research was by definition open to discussion and a matter of debate, without necessarily giving rise to final conclusions or to the assertion of objective and absolute truths."

After the ruling the government of Switzerland announced its decision to appeal the court’s ruling. On 3 June 2014 the ECHR accepted the appeal to move on to the Grand Chamber to clarify the scope available to Swiss authorities in applying the Swiss Criminal Code to combat racism.

The first hearing took take place on 28 January 2015 with Perinçek represented by Prof Laurent Pech, head of Department of Law at Middlesex University in London, and Turkey represented as a third party by Prof Stefan Talmon, who is a professor of law at Oxford University. Switzerland was represented by lawyer Frank Schürmann while Armenia was represented as a third party by Doughty Street Chambers led by Geoffrey Robertson QC and Amal Clooney.