March 6, 2007 - 19:33 AMT
A trial launched in Switzerland against Armenian Genocide denier Turkish nationalist
A trial launched in Switzerland towards leader of Turkish Labor Party Doğu Perinçek, who is blamed for racism, since he had called the Armenian Genocide an "international lie". Prosecutors demand to sentence Perinçek to 6-month imprisonment. In case if a verdict of guilty is brought towards Doğu Perinçek, he will become the first person convicted by Swiss anti-racist law for denying the Armenian Genocide. In 2001 a court in Bern acquitted 12 Turks, who were being prosecuted by this very article. Today on the square near the Court building some 150 people gathered in red bandages on their heads with Turkish banners, they expressed their silent support to Doğu Perinçek. Perinçek himself is sure that he will be freed. "I don't think that I will be convicted," he stated, confessing that Armenians were exposed to massacres in his homeland. At the same time he refused to recognize those massacres as genocide, RFA RL reports.