Attorney and renowned human rights advocate Geoffrey Robertson, QC, hopes that the ECHR Grand Chamber will overrule the irresponsible statement by three lower court judges who said there might be a doubt about the Armenian Genocide.

The European Court of Human Rights will be delivering its Grand Chamber judgment in the case of Pericek v. Switzerland on Thursday.

“I intervened in this case with Amal Clooney on behalf of the Government of Armenia in order to refute this foolish comment about genocide,” Mr. Robertson said in an e-mail response to the inquiry by Armenian News-NEWS.am.

“It does not much matter what the court decides about Perincek – he is a worthless provocateur – so long as it rules that free speech cannot be criminalised unless it carries an incitement to violence or to racial hatred.  Such a ruling would strike at the oppressive section 301 of the Turkish Criminal Code under which a number of Turkish Armenians, including Hrant Dink, have been prosecuted in Turkey for telling the truth about the Armenian genocide.”

A delegation led by Prosecutor General of Armenia Gevorg Kostanyan, who is also the Armenian government’s representative at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), has already left for Strasbourg.

In 2008, a Swiss court had convicted Turkish ultranationalist politician Dogu Perincek for denying the Armenian Genocide. In December 2013, the ECHR had ruled in favor of Perincek’s lawsuit that was filed against Switzerland. Subsequently, the Government of Switzerland petitioned that the Dogu Perincek case be referred for a review by the ECHR Grand Chamber.