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The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has delivered today a judgment of the case of Perinçek v. Switzerland (application no. 27510/08). As was reported, ECHR in Strasbourg has ruled that Switzerland violated chairman of the Turkish Workers’ Party Doğu Perinçek's right to freedom of speech. The decision of the ECHR Grand Chamber is final.

In this connection the press service of the Office of Armenian Prosecutor General posted a statement on its website saying that the Republic of Armenia expected ECHR to exclude from its ruling any wordings that would question – in some way or other - the fact of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire in 1915.

“The judgment delivered by ECHR today says that during the hearing of the case, the examination of the issue of whether the mass massacres and deportations in 1915 in the Ottoman Empire amounted to a genocide was not within the scope of the court’s authority. So the ECHR’s Grand Chamber ruled that ECHR has no authority to make legal statements on this issue,” the Prosecutor’s Office said.
According to the statement, ECHR said in its ruling that the Armenian people have the right to respect of their own and their ancestors’ dignity.

As regards the Perincek v. Switzerland case, the ECHR ruled that his criminal conviction did not contradict precedent law of the European Court, but the Swiss law was applied incorrectly with respect to D. Perincek. That is, criminalization of the Armenian Genocide denial and his criminal conviction for denial were considered as legal by the Court that, however, noted that it shall be done only under the European Convention.

As a result, all the demands presented by the Republic of Armenia in ECHR have been satisfied, the Armenian Prosecutor’s Office said in its statement.